Bes was the dwarf-god of the household, the protector of women in childbirth and of children in their cradles, the guardian against snakes and scorpions, the patron of music and dance and of the comforts of the home. He was depicted in a manner unlike any other Egyptian god: not in profile, but frontally — staring straight out at the viewer, with a comically grotesque face (broad nose, lolling tongue, exaggerated eyebrows), short bowed legs, prominent belly, and a lion's mane and tail. He often wore a feathered headdress and carried a tambourine or a knife. The frontal depiction was apotropaic: the god's grotesque face stared at any threatening force and frightened it away. Bes was painted on the walls of bedrooms, carved into the legs of beds and chairs, worn as amulets, and stamped onto cosmetic implements and household furniture; his presence was meant to be everywhere in the home that mattered.

He had no great mythological cycle, no temple of imperial scale, no priesthood of grand titles. He was a god of the everyday, of small dangers and small comforts, and he was probably more often invoked in private prayer than any of the great gods of the official cult. His origins are obscure — possibly Nubian or African, possibly genuinely indigenous — but his cult flourished from the Middle Kingdom through the Roman period, and beyond the borders of Egypt his image traveled widely: Bes amulets are found in Phoenician contexts, in Cypriot, in southern Italian, and across the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean.