Canopic jars

Canopic jars in painted blue earthenware (Louvre Museum, Paris, France). Such jars were used in ancient Egypt from the 3rd millennium BC to hold the internal organs removed from corpses that were to be mummified. Each organ was assigned to a specific jar. The earliest types of jar had plain lids, but later jars were decorated with sculpted human heads.

In ancient Egypt, four containers for holding a dead person's embalmed organs. Each lid represented the head of one of the four sons of Horus, protecting their allotted organ – the human Imset guarded the liver; Hapy the baboon, the lungs; the jackal Duamutef, the stomach; and the hawk Qebehsenuf, the intestines. Usually carved from stone, the earliest examples date from the 4th dynasty, when the lids depicted human heads.

The four sons of Horus were also associated with the four points of the compass.

The name ‘Canopic’ reputedly derived from the legend of Canopus, a pilot of King Menelaus of Sparta, who was buried at Canopus in Egypt and worshipped in the form of a jar.