Colossal Head from a Bes Image in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2026

Title: Colossal head from a Bes-image

Period: Ptolemaic Period

Date: 332–30 BCE

Medium: Limestone

Dimensions: H. 39.5 × W. 52 × D. 21.5 cm, 74.4 kg (15 9/16 × 20 1/2 × 8 7/16 in., 164 lb.)

Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1923

Object No.: 23.2.35

This impressive head once graced a cultic installation honoring a Bes-image god. After about 664 BCE, most of the Bes-image’s features had settled into a new form—the wide face, flat nose, curly beard, protruding tongue, and thick, arching eyebrows. Given its size, the sculpture was likely architectural, perhaps a capital in a shrine or a ritual room in a temple celebrating a god’s birth. Another possibility is that this face belonged to a statue from a so-called Bes Chamber. These rooms are currently understood to have been sites for the promotion of fertility, seemingly to rejuvenate a man or support the birth of a divine child.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/divine-egypt/exhibition-objects