Figure of Bes with Child
Description
Object Label: The dangers of childbirth could be reduced by having images of the god Bes in the tomb. Bes protected women during delivery and then assured the safety of newborn children. Images of Bes were often placed in tombs for both reasons. They ensured the deceased’s safety during rebirth into the next world, a main function of Egyptian tombs. Bes had a lion’s head and mane and wore a feather headdress. The spots on this figurine suggest the leopard skin Bes sometimes wore. Caption: Figure of Bes with Child, ca. 1075–656 B.C.E.. Faience, 7 1/2 x 2 7/8 x 5/8 in. (19.1 x 7.3 x 1.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 08.480.4. (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 small green-blue faience figurine in the form of a Bes-like dwarf figure with a child held at the torso, shown frontally.
The object is a vertically oriented, molded faience figure painted/colored in green-blue with darker speckling. The face has a broad, stylized beard and a wide mouth; large, rounded facial features and incised contours emphasize the stylized Bes physiognomy. A rectangular element with internal lines appears over the upper torso/head area, and the sides show small protruding elements (possibly arms or attendants’/child-related features). The lower body is decorated with patterned bands and dots; a small separate rounded/rectangular form near the mid-torso suggests the presence of a child figure held close to the Bes figure. The back is not visible, and no clear hieroglyphic text is legible anywhere on the visible surfaces.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 08.480.4 tier-2
- BKM-Object 19078 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.