Neck rests from New Kingdom, Egypt

Although the most common ancient Egyptian head rests found by archaeologists consist of a stand with an upper curved section to support the head and single or multiple supports attached to a fixed base, rare folding New Kingdom examples have also been discovered, featuring sculptures of Bes. Frequently represented on furniture, Bes was a household god who was often depicted as a lion. He was also a protective deity, and in this role he would safeguard the sleeping or the deceased against enemies with a ferocious growl like that indicated on his face in these examples.

While usually shown without any cushion to soften the hard surface on which the head lies, some headrests have been found that still have soft cloth wrapped around them, so they may not have been as uncomfortable as the bare rests suggest. The ancient Egyptians tended to view death as an eternal kind of sleep – as a result, many of the headrests found in Egyptian tombs were inscribed with the owner’s name and epithets. Archaeologists think some of the more ornate head rests, like those found in the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, depicted a religious association with the solar cult, since an individual lowered their head onto the head rest at night and arose from it in the morning.

Folding neck rest with depiction of Bes from the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, ivory, New Kingdom, 18th dynasty courtesy of touregypt.net, Folding neck rest with depiction of Bes, New Kingdom, 1552-1069 BCE,

Folding neck rest with depiction of Bes, New Kingdom, 1552-1069 BCE, wood, in the collections of The Louvre courtesy of Hervé Lewandowski

Headrest from the tomb of King Tutankhamun with the base of the headrest depicting two “lions of the horizon”, while the god Shu holds up the head’s cup, in the same manner as is seen in the Book of the Dead where the solar barque rests on a stand. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Jon Bodsworth.

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