Deity · Egyptian · c. 2000 BCE
Bes
A grotesque dwarf god who guards bedrooms and births by pulling faces and making noise — shown facing the viewer, which Egyptian art almost never does.
Well sourced
The household god, and the argument for reading Egyptian religion from the archaeology rather than only from the temples. He is a dwarf with a lion's mane and a protruding tongue, drawn facing the viewer where nearly everything else in Egyptian art is in profile, and he turns up on beds, headrests, mirrors, cosmetic pots and amulets — the objects of ordinary life rather than of the funerary cult. His business is childbirth, sleep and the things that threaten both. By the late period he is on temple walls too, in the birth houses, which is a domestic figure being taken up by the state rather than the other way round.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
The household again, and the same rooms. No priesthood, and no nome that claims him.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
- First attested
- Egyptian Amulets & Domestic Objects · c. 2000 BCE onward
- Rank
- Household Protector
- Pantheon
- Egyptian
- Order
- Egyptian pantheon
- Base of operations
- The household again, and the same rooms. No priesthood, and no nome that claims him.
- Era
- c. 2000 BCE
- Traditions
- Egyptian
- Placed in
- The Great Gods of Egypt
Traits
- Domain
- Childbirth, sleep, music, the warding off of bad dreams
- Traditional form
- A dwarf with a lion's mane and tail, tongue out, often with a drum or knife
Stats
Known connections
Identified with
3 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 3 offices attributed to Bes, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- social1
- martial2
2 texts
Which texts say so?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Bes, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 300 years
Drives off snakes and bad dreams by noise and grimacing; painted on beds and headrests and worn as a pendant. He is absent from the funerary literature and ubiquitous in domestic finds. Almost uniquely in Egyptian art he is drawn facing the viewer rather than in profile.
The birth houses of the late temples, where the household god of the amulets and bed-frames appears on temple walls in the rooms concerned with the birth of the divine child. A figure known otherwise from domestic archaeology turning up in state architecture is the corpus's evidence that the two registers of Egyptian religion were not separate systems.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Bes?
Is Bes the same as Pazuzu?
What rank is Bes?
What is Bes said to do?
How old is Bes?
Nearest in the corpus
If Bes is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Khepri
The Morning Sun · Egyptian
The sun at dawn, in the form of a scarab beetle rolling it up over the horizon — one of the three daily aspects of the sun, and a pun on the word for coming into being.
Anubis
Guide of the Dead · Egyptian
Embalmer and psychopomp, who leads the dead to the scales — the office Western tradition eventually gives to Michael and to Azrael.
Horus
Falcon King · Egyptian
Son of Osiris, who contends eighty years with Set for the throne. Every living pharaoh was understood to be his incarnation.
Isis
Great of Magic · Egyptian
The great magician who reassembles Osiris and tricks Ra into surrendering his secret name. Her cult eventually reached as far as Roman Britain.
Nephthys
Lady of the House · Egyptian
Set's wife who sides with her sister Isis against him, and mourns Osiris at the head of the bier.
Osiris
Lord of the Dead · Egyptian
Murdered by Set, reassembled by Isis, and installed as judge of the dead. He is the earliest fully developed dying-and-rising sovereign we have.
The books behind Bes
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Egyptian Amulets & Domestic Objects
Anonymous; recovered from settlements and burials · c. 2000 BCE onward · Material evidence
Read Egyptian Amulets & Domestic Objects in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Roland Unger · Wikimedia file page
Egyptian Hymns, Stelae & Temple Inscriptions
Various; tr. E. A. Wallis Budge and others · c. 2000 BCE - 300 BCE · Egyptian
Read Egyptian Hymns, Stelae & Temple Inscriptions in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.