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-5.4-nano
Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
A stone canopic jar with a human-to-animal themed lid depicting a jackal (or jackal-headed figure), shown in profile against a neutral background.
The object is a rounded canopic jar (body) surmounted by a tall, conical lid. The lid is carved with a jackal-like head: pointed ears, a short muzzle, and engraved facial features. The jar body bears an incised rectangular panel of hieroglyphic text, laid out in tightly spaced lines; some signs are more legible than others, but the overall layout suggests funerary/canopic formulae. No visible Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is present. No obvious royal name cartouches are clearly identifiable at this resolution; the inscription appears to be general hieroglyphic text rather than a clearly separated royal titulary. The surfaces show wear consistent with antiquity; minor chips and abrasions are visible along edges of the lid and jar body.
Inscriptions (1)
Visible text (machine reading)
Connections
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.