The headrest with Bes

On beds and headrests

Egyptians used headrests of wood, and sometimes of ivory or stone, where we would use a pillow. In the 18th dynasty, Bes and Taweret, who has her own page in this atlas, were regularly shown on beds, headrests and chairs, and were believed to fend off evil forces. A chair that belonged to Princess Sitamun, found in the tomb of her grandparents Yuya and Thuya, shows figures of Bes with knives and a tambourine. Elite tombs of the same dynasty were furnished with beds and headrests, among the things the dead had used in life.

To verify: A dated headrest carved with Bes: the Brooklyn Museum lists a wooden headrest with two images of the god Bes, dated about 1539–1190 BC, but we could not open its page to check the date, the carving or the label; The details of the Sitamun chair against the Egyptian Museum’s own record; we read them in an encyclopedia article

A spell for the headrest

Spell 166 of the Book of the Dead is a spell for a headrest and against losing the head. It belongs to the group of spells, numbered 155 to 167, that Wallis Budge in 1920 described as engraved on amulets for the dead. Small headrests went into tombs too: among the iron objects in Tutankhamun’s tomb was a miniature headrest.

To verify: The wording of spell 166 in a standard translation, such as R. O. Faulkner’s

How we tell it

We draw a headrest, not a promise of good sleep. Bes was a god of ancient Egypt; we show his face only as headrests carried it, as an emblem, not a portrait. Anything we made would be a new design: we sell no antiquities and nothing taken from a tomb.