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About Amulets Cat. 71 Amulet of Bes, Late Period–Ptolemaic Period Cat. 72 Amulet of Imsety, One of the Four Sons of Horus, Ptolemaic Period Cat. 73 Nehebkau Amulet, Late Period Cat. 74 Nephthys, Horus the Child, and Isis Amulet, Late Period Cat. 75 Amulet of Mut and Khonsu, Third Intermediate Period Cat. 76 Amulet of Pataikos, Third Intermediate Period Cat. 77 Amulet of Re-Horakhty, Late Period–Ptolemaic Period Cats. 78–79 Sekhmet Amulets, Third Intermediate Period Cats. 80–81 Taweret Amulets, Third Intermediate Period–Late Period and New Kingdom Cats. 82–83 Thoth Amulets, Ptolemaic Period Cat. 84 Ram Amulet, Late Period–Ptolemaic Period

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Cat. 71

Amulet of Bes


Late Period–Ptolemaic Period (664–30 BCE)

Ancient Egyptian

Faience; 7 × 2.5 × 1.5 cm (2 3/4 × 1 × 9/16 in.)

The Art Institute of Chicago, purchased with funds provided by Henry H. Getty and Charles L. Hutchinson, 1892.55

This figure portrays the god Bes, who is shown as a man with dwarfism with a large belly, flexed arms and legs, hands resting on hips, and the tail of a lion between his legs. His headdress is made of tall feathers. His face is framed by the skin of a lion or leopard draped over his shoulders like a cape. He grimaces, and his long, triangular tongue hangs below his upper teeth. He has small, loop-like ears. The faience has been carved out to create open spaces between both his flexed arms and his tail and legs. Most of the amulet was covered with bright blue glaze, while the headdress, some of the face, and other areas of the front were picked out in darker, purple-black glaze. With the exception of the animal skin, which tapers to a “V” in the middle of his back, the reverse has little detail. A wide loop behind the head, modeled to look like three adjacent loops, allowed the amulet to be strung (see fig. 1).1

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Fig. 1


Back of cat. 71.

Bes was an extremely popular subject for amulets because the god was a protector of women in childbirth, and of children. In the Late Period and into the Roman era, Bes may be shown as a warrior outfitted with a shield and scimitar, ready to protect his devotees. He is associated with happiness and music, and he is often shown grasping a frame drum. Several examples of ceramics are decorated with an image of a female musician with a tattoo of Bes on her thigh.[1] Images of Bes were used to decorate household and personal objects such as chairs, the legs and footboards of beds, jewelry, and cosmetic boxes.2

Amulets of Bes are known as early as Dynasty 18, although the god himself is attested at least as early as the Middle Kingdom.[2]3

Bes is one of the few gods who appears in two-dimensional representations with his face shown frontally.
4

For more on amulets, see About Amulets.5

Provenance

Panayotis Kyticas (d. 1924), Cairo; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1892.6

Publication History

Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 130n4.
7

Entry by

Notes

  1. Florence Dunn Friedman, ed., Gifts of the Nile: Ancient Egyptian Faience, with the assistance of Georgina Borromeo, exh. cat. (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998), 113, 212, cat. 79.
  2. Carol Andrews, Amulets of Ancient Egypt (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 39.

How to Cite

Emily Teeter, “Cat. 71 Amulet of Bes,” in Ancient Egyptian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago by Emily Teeter and Ashley F. Arico, ed. Ashley F. Arico (Art Institute of Chicago, 2025), https://doi.org/10.53269/9780865593213/77.

© 2025 by The Art Institute of Chicago. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

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