Canopic jar

Among the ancient Egyptians, canopic jars were covered funerary vases, normally composed of clay, intended to keep the viscera of mummified corpses. All the viscera were not kept in a single canopic jar, but rather each organ in its own.

In addition to hieroglyphics, figures of gods were often hand painted on the jars. These were the Four sons of Horus, the guardians of the organs:

Imset (depicted as a human) was responsible for the liver;
Hapi (a baboon) for the lungs;
Duamutef (a jackal) for the stomach;
Kebechsenef (a falcon) for the viscera of the lower body.

Alternatively, the jars themselves, or the jar lids, were made in the shape of the representative god.

The Egyptians considered the heart to be the seat of the soul, so it was the only organ not removed from the body. The brain was not preserved (it was held to be only responsible for producing mucus), but instead was liquefied and completely drained from the corpse through the nostrils.

Sometimes the covers of the jars were modelled after (or painted to resemble) the head of Anubis, the god of embalming. These vases have an elongated form, and surviving examples of them can be seen in museums. The canopic jars were buried in tombs together with the sarcophagus of the deceased, in order to preserve the integrity of the entire body after death (the viscera were extracted to prevent the putrefaction of the corpse). It was also done because the dead person would need their organs for the afterlife.

By extension, due to the similarity of their form, some Etruscan cinerary urns were also called canopic jars, made of clay or bronze, often put on the replica of a throne into the tombs, and with a male or female head modelled on them, representing the deceased's face with the handles having the form of arms.

The name "canopic jar"

Canopus was an ancient Egyptian coastal town in the Nile Delta. Its site is in the eastern outskirts of modern-day Alexandria, around 25 kilometres from the centre of that city.

The god Osiris was worshipped at Canopus under the form of a vase with a human head. Through an old misunderstanding, the name "canopic jar" was applied by early Egyptologists to any vase with a human or animal head.

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The name "canopic jar"

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