Bes was one of the favourite popular deities of the Egyptians; restricted to no place in particular, every votary of music and the dance patronised Bes. The little statuette of a dancing girl with a Bes mask on, besides an actual mask in cartonnage, found at Kahun, show the popularity of the god in the XIIth dynasty. In later times his figure is frequently seen. At Tell el Amarna ornaments for necklaces made in glazed pottery followed two types of Bes, the god dancing with the tambourine seen in side view, and the earlier grotesque front view, with arms akimbo. These familiar little figures continued to be made till late times; and in the Roman age Bes was elevated to architectural dignity on the dies above the columns at Dendereh in the small temple of the Mammeisi. Another and more artificial mode of symbolical decoration was by means of the hieroglyphic signs. Having a mode of writing in which a single mark could express an abstract idea, it was possible to adapt writing to a purely decorative design. Even with alphabetic characters this has been done, as in the elaborate crossing patterns of the earlier Arab period in Egypt, in which no untrained eye would see anything but a complex ornament. [Illustration: 213.—_Ankh._] [Illustration: 214.—_Thet._] [Illustration: 215.—_Uas._] [Illustration: 216.—_Dad._] Four of the hieroglyphs most usually worked into ornamental designs are the _ankh_, a girdle, or symbol of life; the _thet_, another form of girdle, with longer bow-tie in front, which, as always identified with Isis, may have been a primitive feminine girdle, the ankh being masculine; the _uas_, a stick of authority, or symbol of power; and the _dad_, a row of columns, or symbol of stability. As early as the Old Kingdom we find wooden framings, or lattices, ornamented with _dad_ signs; and this continued at least as late as Amenhotep II. The _dad_ also appears in what is probably copied from pierced woodwork, in a relief at Qurneh of Ramessu I. [Illustration: 217.—L.D. III. 131.] [Illustration: Fig. 218.]