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What Were the Jars Made For?

Who are the Figures on the Canopic Jars?

Fun Facts!!!!

Ha ha, I couldn't really find much else on canopic jars, so I just have a super short list of fun facts. Sorry! :-(

  1)  In the twenty-first dynesty, the Egyptians just wrapped all the organs in linen and just placed them back in the body , but yet they still had canopic jars made to be buried with the mummy! Sometimes they even made little fake organs to put in the jars!  Sounds like a waste to me!!

  2)  The jars could be only five inches wide!!

  3)  Really rich people wanted to make their canopic jars out of gold. Sounds kind of expensive!

Where did They Put the Heart and Brain?!?!?



Ammut





Weighing of the Heart Cermony



You probably figured out something is wrong here. Why wasn't the brain put in a canopic jar, it is an important part of the body, right? Wrong!! Well, at least for the ancient Egyptians the brain isn't important.  See, when you put a hook in your head and start trying to fish out the brain, the brain becomes a whole bunch nasty mush and what would you do with that! Throw it away of course!  And that's why the Egyptians discarded the brain because they thought it was just a place where our body stores a whole bunch of snot.  The heart, on the other hand, was part of an important ceremony.  This ceremony was called the weighing of the heart ceremony.  This is when the Egyptians weighed the heart against a feather and if the heart weighed more than the feather (due to bad deeds) a monster, called Ammut, ate the whole heart! This was then recorded by Thoth, the god of writing.  And I'm guessing that Ammut had many, many hearts to eat. I mean how could a feather weigh more than a heart?!?! It just doesn't make any sense to me.

So, How did They Fit????



sodium



I don't know about you, but when I first read about canopic jars I thought they just tried to stuff the organs in the jars.  Of course I was wrong ( but it did take some stuffing for the intestines.)  The Egyptians dried all the organs out with natron.  And now I bet your wondering what natron is.  Well, natron is a sodium carbonate and when I learned this I felt kind of dumb.  I mean of course they used sodium!! Sodium is a preservative and it dries things out easily, so why wouldn't they use it!  Of course not everybody had their organs dried out with sodium, especially the poor.  The cheaper way to do it is to inject oil and spices in to the body.  The organs then decayed and liquefied and got drained out of the body.  I'm not sure if they put the liquid organs in canopic jars, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did. 

What Makes These Jars so Special??

Well of course the canopic jars had to mean something other then somewhere to put your organs.  That's why the jars had figures on every lid.  There were only four jars, so each jar represented a son of Horus.  I honestly think these all are some crazy names, but here we go: First there is Duamutef who protected the stomach.  His figure was the head of a jackal.  Then, there was Qebsenuef or Qebehsennuf and he protected the intestines.  He had the head of a falcon or hawk for his jar.  Then here comes Imseti who protected the liver and he had the human head of Horus.  The last (and most normal) name is Hapi and he protected the lungs. Ha ha and I think it's funny he had the head of a baboon for his figure.  And how did they make all these organs fit in these tiny jars, well read on to find out!

Canopic What?!?

Canopic jars, duh!  The anicient Egyptians used canopic jars during mummification. For what you say, to put the organs in of course!  This was actually a very important proccess during mummification.  The important mummies had canopic jars plus a little chest to put it in called a canopic chest, which they also buried with the mummy.  The super poor people had their organs thrown in the river or  just buried somewhere when they died.  I think it would be pretty nasty to be swimming in the Nile River and seeing intestines floating on the top of the water!  The canopic jars were usually made of limestone, clay, or wood. I think it would be pretty hard to find wood in Egypt though! I bet you wondering why they went through all this trouble just to keep a couple of organs.  Well, the Egyptians thought that each organ had its own special power or cosmic energy that they needed to keep in the afterlife while we think it's just a whole bunch of tissue.  Well now you might want to know which organs they kept, but I guess you will just have to read on!