Home › Browse › BKM › Object 19070
Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art · vessel

Canopic Jar and Cover of Tjuli

Source of record: Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Object Label: Priests separately mummified the stomach, liver, lungs, and intestines, to be placed in jars, in the most expensive method of mummification described by Herodotus. The practice of removing the organs and packing them separately declined in the Middle Kingdom and later, yet Egyptians still included canopic jars in burials. And while the covers of Middle Kingdom canopic jars all have human heads, by the New Kingdom the jars of the royal scribe of Ramesses II, named Tjuli, had human, baboon, jackal, and falcon heads. Caption: Canopic Jar and Cover of Tjuli, ca. 1279–1213 B.C.E.. Egyptian alabaster (calcite), 18 1/2 × 6 11/16 in. (47 × 17 cm) mount (supported by plaicre): 18 1/8 × 7 1/2 × 7 1/2 in. (46 × 19.1 × 19.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 48.30.2a-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 carved canopic jar with a human-headed cover, shown standing upright, with vertical bands of incised hieroglyphs around the body.

The object consists of a rounded jar body with an integrated or attached cover carved in the form of a human face. The lid/cover is rounded at the top and features a stylized, forward-facing human head with defined facial features (eyes and mouth) and a headdress-like form that drapes around the sides of the head. The jar body is decorated with multiple vertical columns of incised hieroglyphs, spread across the front and slightly onto the surrounding surface; the lines are light but clearly legible as carved text blocks rather than paint. No overt Greek, Coptic, or Arabic script is visible. The surface appears stone (translucent/whitish) and shows age wear and light discoloration; some areas of the inscription are abraded. The inscription content is not transcribed in full here, as individual signs are partially unclear at this resolution. The overall form strongly matches a canopic jar and cover.

funerary New Kingdom (as catalogued) good
Deities unknown
Materials Egyptian alabaster (calcite) (as catalogued; appears light-colored stone)
Signs standing/figure with arms out or holding instruments (unclear specific type) ankh (key of life) and/or related life-symbol shapes (unclear) ×2 wedjat-like eye or eye motif (unclear) diagonal bar/tilted stroke (part of hieroglyph group; unclear) ×10
Visible text "Incised hieroglyphs in vertical columns are present on the jar body; exact transcription unclear from the provided image resolution."

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1 AI reading of the photograph

Visible text (machine reading)

Incised hieroglyphs in vertical columns are present on the jar body; exact transcription unclear from the provided image resolution.

Connections

Found at Saqqara
Royals Ramesses II

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 48.30.2a-b tier-2
  • BKM-Object 61170 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.