Canopic jars

Canopic jars

Canopic jars were special cult vessels designed to store the internal organs of the deceased. Regardless of the fact whether they were washed with water alone or preserved with oils, or even, in another process, wrapped in linen strips, internal organs were stored in those four jars. Canopic jars were mostly made of alabaster. They were always the same shape – they were lightly broader upwards but with a narrowing before the very top of the opening.

Their covers were shaped in the form of four ghost-guards: Imset, Hapi, Duamutef and Kebehsenuf – a man, a baboon, a jackal and a falcon. Apparently, organs were considered as an obstacle to the afterlife and therefore had to be neutralised but still preserved in the vicinity of the mummy.