Canopic Jar and Lid (Depicting a Jackal)
Description
Object Label: Canopic jars first appeared in the tomb of Hetepheres, the mother of Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid. They were intended to hold the separately mummified internal organs. The middle-class examples of canopic jars, which first appeared seven hundred years later, are often dummies like these, never hollowed out to hold the organs, but still included in the tomb. Canopic jars demonstrate the development of a custom at a royal cemetery that was then adopted in a cheaper form by the middle class. Caption: Canopic Jar and Lid (Depicting a Jackal), 664–525 B.C.E., or later. Limestone, 12 × Diam. 4 3/4 in. (30.5 × 12.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.894Ea-b. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
AI image analysis GPT-4o-2024-08-06
Machine-generated from the object's image on May 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
A canopic jar with a lid shaped like a baboon head and hieroglyphic inscriptions on the body.
The artifact is a canopic jar used in ancient Egyptian mummification rituals. The lid is sculpted into the head of a baboon, representing one of the Four Sons of Horus. The body of the jar features vertically arranged hieroglyphic inscriptions that likely convey the name of the owner and spells for protection in the afterlife. The jar is made from stone, most likely limestone, and exhibits a smooth, polished surface.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.894Ea-b tier-2
- BKM-Object 4107 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.