This shouldered pottery vessel is made of Marl clay and is a type of Bes typical of the Late Period. The hyperboloid rim has somewhat of a ledge and the vessel itself is wheel-made, as is evident by the wheel marks near the base. The vessel has a small button-like base. On the front is an extremely stylised image of the god Bes, with just the eyes presented. Such vessels are found in Palestine as well as Egypt. The function of these vessels is unknown, although it has been suggested that they contained wine or milk drunk at festivals. See also EC1283.

7.5YR 4/2 Dark brown.

Arnold, Dorothea and Janine Bourriau (eds) 1993. An introduction to ancient Egyptian pottery. Sonderschrift, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Abteilung Kairo 17. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. [fig. 100ff] Bubenheimer-Erhart, Friederike 2005. Einflüsse Ägyptens in Etrurien (Kat. 89–98). In Beck, Herbert, Peter C. Bol, and Maraike Bückling (eds), Ägypten Griechenland Rom: Abwehr und Berührung, 154–162, 530–536. Frankfurt am Main: Das Städel. Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie. [p. 534] Gill, James C. R. 2016. A corpus of Late Period and Ptolemaic Bes-vessels from Mut el-Kharab, Western Desert of Egypt. In Bader, Bettina, Christian M. Knoblauch, and E. Christiana Köhler (eds), Vienna 2 - ancient Egyptian ceramics in the 21st century: proceedings of the international conference held at the University of Vienna, 14th–18th of May, 2012, 211–228. Leuven: Peeters. Kaiser, Kevin Robert 2006. Water, milk, beer and wine for the living and the dead: Egyptian and Syro-Palestinian Bes-vessels from the New Kingdom through the Graeco-Roman period. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Services. Klassen, Stanley 2016–2017. Persian Period Bes vessels from Tell el-Maskhuta. Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 43, 101–117. Pudleiner, Resző 2001. Hathor on the Thoth Hill. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 57, 239–245.