BES-WARRIOR. EGYPTIAN TERRACOTTA FIGURINES FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE PUSHKIN STATE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS

The article publishes and analyses six Egyptian terracotta figurines depicting the god Bes as a warrior of Graeco-Roman Period, including a unique statuette with a Greek inscription on the pedestal. All of them are kept in the storeroom of the Department of the Ancient East of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. Five of them were collected by Vladimir S. Golenischev, one was in the so-called Old Collection of Moscow University. The iconography of a part of the analysed figurines contains a kind of `childish' component inherited from the apotropaic god, protector of the maternal sphere, and is associated with the `Horus on crocodiles' magic steles. Another version of protective iconography includes a warlike component, expressed in the military attitude of Bes. This image may have been a product of Ptolemaic propaganda, in which features of the Egyptian Bes-warrior and Bes alter ego of the `Horus on crocodiles' were successfully combined.