Chair or Bed Leg with the God Bes
1540–1296 BCE
- Medium
- tamarisk
- Classification
- Furniture and woodwork
- Dimensions
- Overall: 44.7 x 5.9 cm (17 5/8 x 2 5/16 in.)
- Culture
- Egypt, New Kingdom (1540–1069 BCE), Dynasty 18
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
- Credit line
- Guerdon S. Holden Memorial Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The genial god Bes appears here in the form of a furniture leg. With hands on his pot belly and wearing a short kilt with a long apron, he stands bowlegged on a truncated cone base. He has long, upward sweeping, diagonal eyebrows, large eyes, full cheeks, and rounded ears, and he wears a full beard and mustache. His body is soft and unmuscular. As a household god, Bes figured prominently as a decorative motif both in royal and private dwellings.
