Bes

The lamp burns low in a back room and a small, ugly figure stamps his feet at the foot of the bed. He is barely knee-high, bandy-legged, his tongue stuck out and his teeth bared, and he is shaking a rattle hard enough to fill the room with noise. He is not there to be admired. He is there because a woman is in labour and the dark is full of things that would harm her, and the job of this grinning dwarf is to make himself loud and hideous enough to drive them back into it.

Bes was the god the Egyptians actually lived with. He had almost no great temples and no cycle of grand myths to his name, and that absence is the point. While the high gods governed the sun, the dead, and the throne, Bes worked the threshold of the ordinary house. He guarded sleep and childbirth, frightened off snakes and scorpions, scattered nightmares, and presided over music, dancing, drink, and sex. His face stared out from headrests so that bad dreams could not approach a sleeper, from cosmetic jars and mirrors where a woman saw her own reflection, and from the curved ivory wands laid across the bellies of mothers in labour. He was a god you could hold in your hand.

He looked like nothing else in Egyptian art. Egyptian gods are almost always rendered in clean profile, serene and side-on. Bes faces straight out at the viewer, full-frontal, which alone made him strange and arresting. He is a dwarf with a large head, a flat broad nose, a thick beard, a lion’s mane framing his face and sometimes a lion’s tail behind him, bow legs, a heavy paunch, and a tongue thrust out in a grimace. On his head sits a tall plume of feathers. In his hands, depending on the object, he carries a rattle or a tambourine, or a short sword and knives, or live snakes that he is busy strangling. Sometimes he wears the skin of a lion, sometimes a soldier’s short tunic, braced as if to lunge at whatever is coming. The grotesque face was not an accident or a joke. An expression that repels people was understood to repel demons far more effectively.

Where he came from is genuinely uncertain. Many scholars trace him south, to Nubia or the C-Group culture beyond Egypt’s borders, and point out that the word bes means cat in Nubian, which would suit his feline mane and features. Others read his name from Egyptian roots: bs, meaning flame, tying him to the sun god Ra, or bz, meaning to introduce or initiate, perhaps a reference to masks worn in his cult. Bes-like figurines have turned up in deposits as old as the predynastic Naqada period, but he stays a minor presence until the Middle Kingdom, when his image begins to multiply, and by the New Kingdom he is everywhere. His popularity outlasted the pharaohs themselves.

He kept odd company among the gods. His female counterpart, Beset, mirrors him and sometimes appears as a mother of Horus, and Bes himself was linked at different times with Ra, with Hathor goddess of love and music and joy, and with the child Horus. That last connection put his face at the top of a peculiar and important kind of monument. The cippi, also called Horus stelae, show the infant Horus standing on crocodiles and gripping scorpions and serpents, with the head of Bes watching over the scene from above. Water was poured over the carved spells and then drunk or used to wash a wound, carrying the protection of the inscription into the body. Bes guarded the most vulnerable thing the Egyptians could imagine, a child among venomous animals, and he did it on cheap household amulets and on objects meant to cure a real snakebite alike.

In the Greek and Roman centuries his reach grew stranger still. An oracle of Bes operated at Abydos, where people came to sleep in his presence and receive answers in dreams, a practice of incubation that left hundreds of Greek graffiti scratched onto the walls of the old temple of Seti I by the visitors who consulted him. The Roman writer Ammianus Marcellinus recorded the oracle’s existence, and at Saqqara there were chambers associated with Bes where similar dream-seeking went on. The depth of that ritual world surfaced again recently. Chemical analysis of a Ptolemaic mug modelled as the face of Bes found residues of a deliberate concoction: wild rue, the Egyptian blue lotus, a plant of the Cleome genus, fermented liquid sweetened with honey, and traces of human fluids. Someone, more than two thousand years ago, drank a mind-altering brew from the god’s grinning mouth, almost certainly as part of a rite tied to fertility or to the dangerous passage of birth.

His powers all run in one direction, toward keeping harm out. He drove away evil spirits, killed or repelled snakes and scorpions, protected sleepers and especially women in childbed, and brought music, laughter, and good fortune into a house. A clay figure of a dwarf, named in magical spells, was laid on the belly of a labouring woman to bring his strength to bear at the exact moment it was needed. But his reach stopped at the doorframe. He commanded no portion of the cosmos, fought in no war of the gods, ruled no city or temple estate, and left behind no story of his own birth, deeds, or death. He was a guardian and never a ruler, a god summoned by the rattle and the amulet rather than the priesthood. That was always enough. The Egyptians did not need Bes to explain the world. They needed him to get them safely through the night.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the Egyptian god Bes?

Bes is an ancient Egyptian dwarf god who protected households, pregnant women, children, and sleepers from evil spirits, snakes, and misfortune. Unlike the major temple gods, he was a domestic guardian found in nearly every Egyptian home, also associated with music, dance, joy, and childbirth.

What did Bes look like?

Bes was depicted as a bow-legged, big-bellied dwarf with a broad bearded face, a lion-like mane, a protruding tongue, and a crown of tall feathers. He was almost always shown facing forward, which was unusual in Egyptian art where gods appear in profile, and he often holds a rattle, a knife, or snakes. His grotesque, frightening expression was believed to scare away demons.

What was Bes the god of?

Bes was the protector of the home, childbirth, mothers, children, and sleep, and he also presided over music, dancing, fertility, sexuality, and joy. He defended people against snakes, scorpions, nightmares, and evil spirits rather than governing any part of the cosmos.

Where did the god Bes come from?

Bes likely originated south of Egypt, in Nubia or the C-Group culture, and the word “bes” means cat in Nubian, which suits his feline features. Bes-like figurines exist from the predynastic Naqada period, but his worship became common in the Middle Kingdom and spread everywhere in the New Kingdom.

Why is Bes shown on Horus cippi and amulets?

Bes appears on cippi, the Horus stelae showing the child Horus gripping snakes and scorpions, because he was a protector of the vulnerable, especially against venomous bites. Water was poured over the inscriptions and then drunk or applied to wounds to transfer his protective power, and his image was worn as amulets and carved onto household objects for the same reason.

Related Entries

Taweret, Heqet, Hathor, Bast (Bastet), Sekhmet, Horus, Ra, Isis, Khnum, Di Penates, Lares, Domovoi, Tomte, Genius loci