Remember Indiana Jones and the Temple of
Doom? Well today we have in our sights
Midlothian Hancock and the Temple of Bes. The aforementioned
ex-sociologist takes most of the credit for the pseudoarchaeological
feeding frenzy which has recently been going on at Giza (see Parts
Seventeen and Eighteen in Weekly Editions 083 and 085). Could he and his
numerous followers be looking in the wrong place though? I have a vision
of a breakaway prehistorian (perhaps Ibiza’s own ‘Manhattan West’)
hacking a path through the Ibicenco scrub, intent on bringing to light
Ibiza’s other long-lost sanctuary. Once we recall that Tanit’s
shrine at Es Culleram in the island’s north-east corner lay untouched
for two thousand years, it seems quite possible that the same might have
happened to that of our presiding deity. The image of Bes - a writhing
snake in one hand and a mace (or machete) in the other - is to be found
on the overwhelming majority of Carthaginian coins minted on Ibiza
between 350 BC and 50 AD. This unprecedented numismatic run provides
solid proof that Iboshim or ‘the Islands of Bes’ were indeed the dancing
deity’s very own snake-hunting preserve. Local archaeologists believe
that these images may have reproduced the features of a large
cult-statue which presided over an important shrine, perhaps at the
summit of Dalt Vila. But although a mould for making earthenware plaques
has come to light, not a single votive statue of Bes has ever been found
on Ibiza. After a hundred years of painstaking excavations, the
hypothetical treasure remains out of sight, perhaps in an overlooked
cavity deep in the Pityusan hills - like the six hundred Tanits which
slumbered peacefully until a scorching July day in 1907. It was almost
certainly thanks to Bes too that the Romans called Ibiza and Formentera
the ‘Sacred Islands’ (Insulae Augustae). To ancient minds it was indeed
miraculous that not a single snake or scorpion could be found in the
archipelago, unlike neighbouring Mallorca and Menorca - to say nothing
of the snake-infested Maghreb.
The Bawiti Bes,
Bahariya Oasis |
It
often used to be said that no temples were ever built to Bes, that he
was a domestic deity with nothing but small household shrines, but a
recent discovery in western Egypt is bringing about a radical
reassessment. Two hundred miles south-west of Cairo, the Bahariya Oasis
lies a good fifty leagues from the nearest major archaeological site and
is surrounded on all sides by the burning sands of the Libyan Desert.
But it has become the hottest site in the land in quite another sense
thanks to the discovery eight years ago of over a hundred Graeco-Roman
mummies, many wearing gold masks. When a journalist dubbed it the Valley
of the Golden Mummies, Klondike fever descended overnight. Like many
another legendary location, a halo of myths soon clustered around, one
being that the catacombs were discovered when a guard on a donkey sank
into a hole in the ground - as indeed happened exactly fifty years
earlier (1946) in the case of our own Hipogea de la mula or Tomb
of the Mule on Puig des Molins. Egypt’s archaeological supremo, Zahi
Hawass has suggested that as many as ten thousand mummies may be lying
in the sandstone vaults, waiting patiently for his team’s toothbrushes
and trowels.
Amid
the frenzy of gold and donkey-chatter, an earlier discovery at Bahariya
has been quietly overlooked, namely the first and only temple dedicated
entirely to Bes, unearthed back in 1988. Remember that Bes was popular
in ancient Egypt for at least two millennia (and in the Phoenician-Punic
world for not much less) it is really quite remarkable that no temple
dedicated to him had previously come to light. But wait a minute: in
ancient Bithia on Sardinia’s southern coastline, the recovery of a
two-and-a-half foot sandstone Bes led Italian archaeologists to talk of
a temple there, even if the one at Bahariya is the first to be
fully-accredited. The Egyptian sanctuary contains what is probably the
finest statue of the dwarf-god ever found; four feet high with traces of
the original paint (see illustration above).
It
is time once again to step onto our magic library carpet and it so
happens that today’s destination is the home state of Indiana Jones
himself. Shelli Wright Johnson’s The Story of Bes (2000) opens
just a few miles from the shores of Lake Michigan in the gabled attic of
an old farmhouse. While little Andy’s parents are going through the
worldly goods of his recently-deceased grandma down below, their
inquisitive nine-year-old and his trusty terrier are picking their way
through the weird and wonderful objects stored for generations out of
sight and mind. Among them is great-great grandpa Horace’s old wooden
box from Egypt containing a roll of tattered and crumbling ‘paper’. Andy
is puzzling over its strange squiggles when Max starts growling at a
strange creature lurking in a corner:
To Andy, the “intruder’
looked like a life-sized version of the troll doll Uncle Skip had given
to him for Christmas a few years ago: a short, plump little character
with wrinkled blue skin, bowed legs, long arms, a round face with big
dark eyes and protruding eyebrows, lion-like ears, and a thick, curly,
gray beard. Instead of the usual tuft of long, crazy hair one would
expect to find on a troll doll, this peculiar creature sported a tiara
of somewhat faded but still colourful feathers. He was dressed in what
appeared to be a leopard skin wrap, fastened around the waist by a
snakeskin belt […] Hanging from the left side of the snake belt was a
small red leather pouch, and on the right was what appeared to be a
harp, or some sort of stringed instrument. A bow was slung over his
hairy blue shoulder, and Andy could see the feathered tips of at least a
half dozen arrows sticking out from the quiver that hung alongside.
The dwarfish intruder held a wooden walking stick shaped like an ankh
(which Andy immediately recognized as the ancient Egyptian symbol
representing eternal life), and he waved it wildly in the air as he
yelled in some strange language Andy and Max did not understand. What
they did understand was that whatever or whoever this bright blue
creature was, he was clearly not happy at the moment.
The Story of Bes,
p. 30
Of
course not! Our local Indiana hero has unwittingly pipped the dwarf-god
to the post, the papyrus being a vital document the latter has been
chasing over the previous two thousand years. But after a brief session
of magical harp-playing the two become bosom pals and treasure-hunting
gives way to a tutorial on Egyptian mythology. Bes proudly explains his
role in the saga of Osiris, assisting in the birth of falcon-headed
Horus (Horace, geddit?). I am delighted to say that Byblos (see
Part Seventeen in Weekly Edition 083 Saturday 28th September
2002), where Osiris’s coffin-like casket was washed ashore, gets an
honorary mention.
A
welcome change of pace comes in the second half of the tale, set in real
time (i.e. ancient Egypt) as Andy’s endless interruptions - like the
omnipresent italics - will grate on most nerves. After slaying a
gigantic sea-serpent and a fearsome crocodile, Bes leads Isis out of a
fifty-day sandstorm into a quiet cave where the latter gives birth to
Horus. At this point Andy’s father interrupts the narrative with the
news that Mom is about to give birth prematurely. An invisible Bes does
his childbirth protective act in the local hospital’s Emergency Room and
all turns out well. Before taking his leave at the farm, Bes assures
Andy that there are many more stories to tell - how he protected young
Horus during childhood and trained the god for the ultimate showdown
with evil Uncle Set (like Disney’s The Lion King). Before The
Story of Bes, Part Two rolls off the presses, I do hope someone has
a quiet word with the author and her editor about italics.
The
discovery of Tanit’s sanctuary in San Vicente came about thanks to a
shepherd-boy who was searching for a lost goat - or so the story goes;
the sanctuary at Bithia came to light in 1930 after a sea-storm swept
away part of the neighbouring coastline; then there is the conventional
shrine-detector mentioned above - a donkey or mule. So what can be done
to increase the chances of finding Bes’s Pityusan fastness? I would put
money on it being either in an extremely obvious place, or else in an
extraordinarily remote one: either at the top of Dalt Vila (underneath
the citadel, currently being excavated) or at the opposite end of the
island from Tanit - the steep escarpments overlooking Cala d’Hort. The
view across to Es Vedrà would provide a neat mirror image of the view to
Tagomago from the rocky platform in front of Es Cuieram. If the cult of
Phoenician-Egyptian Bes arrived in Ibiza before that of Carthaginian
Tanit, then his priests would surely have appropriated the site with the
best view. Is there anywhere else in the Mediterranean that can hold a
candle to it?
Well
yes, there is a third possibility: the Illa Plana just beyond Marina
Botafoc was first excavated in 1907-8, yielding a large number of
strange curviform figurines over which at least three generations of
archaeologists have been scratching their heads. They have been called
Cypriot, for want of a better label, but could they perhaps have
something to do with the forgotten cult of Bes? And might not the
original statue whose image was reproduced on Ibiza’s Carthaginian coins
be lying just under the surface - to which a complicating layer of
closely-packed chalets has just been added?
So
Mystery-Hunters, why squander hard-earned royalties digging for
imaginary halls beneath the Giza Plateau or the Yucatan shelf? Just two
months ago a group of Italian archaeologists announced the discovery of
a large statue of the Carthaginian fertility god Baal-Addir and an
unusual polychromatic Egyptian relief (ca. 425 BC) in a painted
underground chamber in Sulcis, southern Sardinia. The White Island too
is calling. Don’t forget to bring the donkey.
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From Alvaro Campaner y
Fuertes,
Estudio sobre las monedas de Insula
Augusta y Ebusus
(Saville, 1878) |
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