拍品專文
Bes and his female counterpart, Best, were closely associated with the mammisi (birthhouse), childhood and happiness. This steatopygous dwarf-like figure could also be a representation of a Nubian, since they were often depicted as wet nurses or concubines in association with cosmetic objects. Cf. The Image of the Black in Western Art, I, Menil Foundation, Houston, 1991, pp. 36 and 78-9, nos. 1 and 47-50 for a statuette of a young Nubian girl carrying an ointment jar and wearing a painted pendant of Bes, in the Gulbenkian Museum of Oriental Art, Durham, and another of a Nubian girl presenting a stemmed bowl supporting a monkey now in University College, London.