Talisman of Ancient Googly-Eyed God Discovered

Talisman of Ancient Googly-Eyed God Discovered
2012 06 22

A newly identified googly-eyed artifact may have been used by the ancient Egyptians to magically protect children and pregnant mothers from evil forces.

Made of faience, a delicate material that contains silica, the pale-green talisman of sorts dates to sometime in the first millennium B.C. It shows the dwarf god Bes with his tongue sticking out, eyes googly, wearing a crown of feathers. A hole at the top of the face was likely used to suspend it like a bell, while a second hole, used to hold the bell clapper, was apparently drilled into it in antiquity.

Bes, a dwarf god and protector of young children and pregnant women, is depicted in this faience bell from the first millennium B.C.
CREDIT: Photo courtesy Egypt Centre/Swansea University

Carolyn Graves-Brown, a curator at the Egypt Centre, discovered the artifact in the collection of Woking College, the equivalent of a high school for juniors and seniors. The college has more than 50 little-studied Egyptian artifacts, which were recently lent to the Egypt Centre at Swansea University where they are being studied and documented.

Graves-Brown told LiveScience in an interview that at first she didn’t know what the object was. It wasn’t until she learned of a similar artifact in the British Museum that she was able to determine that it is a faience Bes bell, one of a very few known to exist.

"If you try to rattle it much it would (have) broken easily," she said.

[...]

Read the full article at: livescience.com

Share |

Latest News from our Front Page

BBC, UK media told to shut up in the name of national security
2013 06 19
MoD serves news outlets with D notice over surveillance leaks BBC and other media groups issued with D notice to limit publication of information that could ’jeopardise national security’ Defence officials issued a confidential D notice to the BBC and other media groups in an attempt to censor coverage of surveillance tactics employed by intelligence agencies in the UK and US. Editors were ...

Uri Geller psychic spy? The spoon-bender’s secret life as a Mossad and CIA agent revealed
2013 06 19
A new documentary claims the showbiz psychic is involved in global espionage - and that after 9/11 he was ’reactivated’ as a pyschic spy. We may know him for spoon bending antics and for his lengthy friendship with pop star Michael Jackson but showbiz psychic Uri Geller has seemingly had a lengthy second career as a secret agent for Mossad ...

Confirmed: 1-Billion-Year-Old Water Tastes ’Terrible’
2013 06 19
Saltier than sea water and the consistency of "very light maple syrup." Yuck. Last month, a paper published in Nature reported on some water that had been trapped 1.5 miles below the Earth’s surface in Canada for a long while. How long? Based on an analysis of the isotopes of natural gases in the water, scientists believe it to be ...

The Govt Is Spying on America with Drones, Too
2013 06 19
In an alarming but hardly shocking admission, FBI Director Robert Mueller confirmed that drones have been used to conduct surveillance in the US, though he was quick to reassure citizens that it was ’very seldom’. He did not disclose the particulars of the surveillance to the Senate hearing being held on Wednesday (June 19, 2013), but went on to characterize ...

TWA Flight 800 Investigators Claim the Official Crash Story Is a Lie
2013 06 19
A new film claims the official government report on the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 is an elaborate fabrication, but the most shocking part of the story is that charges are being leveled by some of the very investigators who put the report together. Six experts who appear in the film were members of the National Transportation Safety ...

More News »