Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art · statue

Bes

Source of record: Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Caption: Bes, 305 B.C.E.–395 C.E.. Limestone, 8 11/16 × 5 7/16 × 1 3/4 in. (22 × 13.8 × 4.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.1511E. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano

Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.

A carved limestone block/stele showing a standing, human-like dwarf figure with leonine features, identified in the catalogue as Bes.

The image depicts a rounded, tapering carved limestone figure in relief. The figure has a large, heavy head with a broad face and prominent mouth area, with arms held forward/downward and legs rendered with a simplified, stylized stance. The surface includes incised/relief details forming facial features and stylized clothing or attributes; behind/around parts of the torso there are blocky geometric elements that could be decorative motifs or poorly preserved inscription signs. No clear cartouche or surrounding program of royal titulary is visible. There is no legible Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text. The overall carving style and iconography are consistent with a deity statue/plaquette type such as Bes, though the exact presence and shape of specific Bes attributes (e.g., explicit headdress or facial fringe) is not fully resolvable from the image quality.

religious Ptolemaic Period to Roman Period (probably), as per catalogue (exact dating unclear from image alone) good
Deities Bes
Materials limestone

Connections

Deities Bes
Materials Limestone

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 37.1511E tier-2
  • BKM-Object 118042 tier-2
About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
  • AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
  • Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
  • Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.