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

Bes

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

Description

Object Label: The Egyptians worked with gold and semiprecious stones from earliest times. They mined both types of material in the desert east of the Nile and in present-day Sudan, called “Nubia” in ancient times after the ancient Egyptian word for gold (nub). Clearly, objects made from these high-value materials were available only to the highest ranks of society. Caption: Bes, 664–30 B.C.E.. Gold, 1 1/2 x 9/16 x 1/16 in. (3.8 x 1.4 x 0.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 08.480.208. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

AI image analysis GPT-4o-2024-08-06

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

A gold amulet depicting the Egyptian deity Bes.

The artifact is a gold amulet featuring the dwarf god Bes, a protective deity in ancient Egyptian mythology. Bes is depicted with a leonine face and a feathered headdress, reflecting his association with protection, music, and childbirth. The craftsmanship highlights detailed facial features and ornamentation, typical of protective amulets worn for personal safety.

religious unknown excellent
Deities Bes
Materials gold

Connections

Found at Thebes
Deities Bes
Materials Gold

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 08.480.208 tier-2
  • BKM-Object 3250 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.