Bes
A protective dwarf god with a lion’s mane and ears, a feathered crown and his tongue out, usually shown face-on. Egyptians put him in birth rooms, carved him on mirrors, cosmetic jars and pillows, and hung his amulets on children’s necklaces.
Meaning
Bes is a dwarf with a huge bearded head, his tongue out, a flat nose, large ears and bowed legs, wearing a panther skin whose tail touches the ground and a crown of feathers; this is Budge’s 1904 description. A limestone statuette in Cairo shows him with “the ears and mane of a lion”, a beard and seven feathers on his head. Unlike nearly every other Egyptian god he is usually shown full face, not in profile, which Budge and the House of Netjer both remark on. Petrie calls him “The god of children, of dance and games”, and the Global Egyptian Museum “the dwarf god of joy and happiness” and “a household deity”. Erman compared him and the similar half-animal demons to the satyrs of the Greeks: comic beings who amused the gods with music and dancing, but who also fought with knives and bows and strangled snakes and lions, and it was as a protector against such dangers that people trusted Bes. As a warrior, Budge adds, he holds two knives, or a shield and a short sword. The House of Netjer (Kemetic Orthodoxy) honours him today as the Name most strongly tied to protecting the household, its children and pregnant women.
Origin and history
One of the oldest pictures of Bes, Budge notes, following Wiedemann, is in Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahari, where he stands with Taweret beside the couch in the relief of the queen’s birth. From temple scenes like it Budge concluded that Bes was thought to be present wherever children were born, and to protect children and young people.
He was a god of ordinary homes. In the New Kingdom, Erman found, middle-class Egyptians named their children after him and kept his figure in the house, though the priests ranked him as a minor helper of the great gods. Petrie’s catalogue at University College London has Bes amulets from the Eighteenth Dynasty to Roman times, worn on “Necklaces, especially of children”, and a small double-sided Bes figure in Vienna is of a type common in the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. Later, Budge writes, he took on the character of a sun god and merged with Horus the Child, Harpocrates.
Where did Bes come from?
Nobody agrees. Budge reported that some scholars held him to be Semitic and others African, while he himself thought the name Egyptian, given for the animal skin he wore. The British Museum’s guide of 1909 lists him among the “gods of the Sûdân”, and the House of Netjer calls his origin unknown “but probably Sub-Saharan”. Petrie connects the name with Besa, which he gives as “the native name of Cynaelurus guttatus”, a wild cat.
Where you’ll see him
Mostly on things used at home and on the body. Budge lists figures of Bes on the handles of mirrors, on kohl pots and on pillows, Erman on mirror handles and cosmetic jars, and the House of Netjer his masked face “with lolling tongue” on amulets and furniture. Petrie found his amulets worn on children’s necklaces. In temples he appears in the scenes of royal births, beside Taweret.
Read next
- Next in Egyptian gods and their symbolsOsirisOsiris’s symbols are the crook and flail in his hands and the atef, the tall white crown with a plume on each side. He is the Egyptian king of the dead, drawn as a mummy with only his hands and face free, sometimes with green skin, and the djed pillar was read as his backbone.
- The same shape in Adinkra symbolsAnanse Ntontan (spider’s web)Ananse Ntontan, “spider’s web”, is the adinkra symbol of wisdom and creativity, after Ananse, the spider of Akan stories.
See also
Taweret, Isis, Horus, Set, Anubis, Geb.
Sources
- The Gods of the Egyptians, Volume II, E. A. Wallis Budge, 1904, Methuen, London (Internet Archive), Vol. II, pp. 284–287
- A Handbook of Egyptian Religion, Adolf Erman, translated by A. S. Griffith, 1907, Archibald Constable, London (Internet Archive), pp. 75–76
- Amulets, illustrated by the Egyptian collection in University College, London, W. M. Flinders Petrie, 1914, Constable and Company, London (Internet Archive), Nos. 188–190
- A guide to the Egyptian collections in the British Museum, British Museum, 1909 (introduction by E. A. Wallis Budge), Harrison and Sons, London (Project Gutenberg), List of the gods
- Statuette of the God Bes (Global Egyptian Museum), Egyptian Museum, Cairo, JE 34036, The Global Egyptian Museum, description
- Bes (Global Egyptian Museum), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 5569, The Global Egyptian Museum, description
- Bes (Names of Netjer), House of Netjer, “Names of Netjer” glossary, House of Netjer (Kemetic Orthodoxy), Bes
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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