Getty Museum

Engraved Scarab with Bes Fighting a Griffin

Date

about 500 B.C.

Medium

Green jasper

Culture

Phoenician

Department

Jewelry

Institution

Getty Museum

This scarab gem depicts the Egyptian god, Bes, fighting a griffin. He has a triple-feather head-dress, mane-like stippled hair, and wears an animal skin knotted around his waist. The griffin is crested and shown rearing on its hind legs, throwing its head back as Bes grips its right foreleg with his left hand and crushes its neck with his right arm. Above Bes, there is a disc and crescent, behind him an upright uraeus cobra. Carved in the form of a beetle with an intaglio on the flat underside, scarab gems were usually pierced and worn either as a pendant or attached to a metal hoop and worn as a ring, with the beetle side facing out and the intaglio surface resting against the finger. When serving as a seal, the ring was removed, the scarab swiveled, and the intaglio design was pressed into soft clay or wax to identify and secure property. The scarab form originally derived from Egypt, where it had been used for seals and amulets for centuries. However, the use of green jasper as well as the incorporation of Egyptian deities and symbols is typical of Phoenician gem production in the Late Archaic period, and particularly of gems from Punic and Phoenician sites in the western Mediterranean. Greek gem carving, which changed dramatically in form, materials, and technique in the-mid 500s B.C., was influenced by Phoenician models, which the Greeks probably saw on Cyprus.

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