Bes-Image Amulet
Description
Object Label: Ancient Egyptian women wore amulets of birth gods to protect them during and immediately after childbirth. One of these birth gods, a female deity often known as Taweret, was shown with the head and body of a hippopotamus, lion's paws, and a stylized crocodile hanging down her back. Her male counterpart, commonly called Bes, usually appeared frontally. In early Dynasty 18, artists depicted Bes with a human face and a lion's body and mane. Caption: Bes-Image Amulet, ca. 1539–1478 B.C.E.. Faience, 1 3/16 × 5/8 × 3/16 in. (3 × 1.6 × 0.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.914E. (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.
Faience amulet depicting the god Bes.
The artifact is a faience amulet representing Bes, characterized by his leonine features, full beard, and short stature. The amulet is vibrant with a turquoise glaze typical of faience pieces. Bes is shown standing with his hands on his hips, a common pose associated with this protective deity.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.914E tier-2
- BKM-Object 4112 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.