The organs removed from a mummy were stored in a set of four containers called canopic jars. Each jar held a specific organ and was protected by one of four guardian deities known as the Sons of Horus. The four organs preserved this way were the liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines.
What Canopic Jars Were For
Ancient Egyptians believed a person’s organs needed to be preserved for their spirit to survive in the afterlife. During mummification, embalmers removed the major abdominal and chest organs through an incision in the body, dried them using natron (a natural salt compound found in Egypt containing sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate), then wrapped them in linen and placed each one into its own jar. The jars were sometimes called qebu en wet, meaning “jars for embalming.”
Each jar was assigned to a specific deity, and inscriptions or sculpted lids identified which god guarded the organ inside:
- Imsety (human head): protected the liver
- Hapy (baboon head): protected the lungs
- Duamutef (jackal head): protected the stomach
- Qebehsenuef (falcon head): protected the intestines
Materials and Construction
The material used for canopic jars depended largely on the wealth and status of the deceased. Wealthier Egyptians had jars carved from travertine, a type of limestone sometimes called Egyptian alabaster. This stone was prized because it was easy to carve and had a pale, slightly translucent quality. Less affluent burials used jars made from pottery or common limestone. Royal examples, like those found in Tutankhamun’s tomb, were carved from calcite and housed inside an elaborately decorated canopic chest.
How Jar Designs Changed Over Time
Canopic jars weren’t always decorated with animal heads. During the Middle Kingdom (roughly 2055 to 1650 BC), all four jar lids were shaped as identical human heads. It wasn’t until the New Kingdom (around 1550 to 1070 BC) that the lids began depicting the four distinct Sons of Horus, each with its own animal or human form. This is the version most people recognize today.
By the end of the New Kingdom, mummification practices shifted. Embalmers started wrapping the preserved organs in linen packages and placing them back inside the body cavity instead of storing them in jars. The organs were sometimes wrapped into small bundles shaped like miniature mummies. Canopic jars didn’t disappear, though. They continued to be placed in tombs as symbolic objects, eventually becoming solid dummies with no hollowed interior at all. Form outlasted function.
Where the Jars Were Placed in the Tomb
Canopic jars were generally positioned near the foot of the mummy’s coffin. In some tombs, builders carved special niches into the walls to hold them. In more elaborate burials, the four jars sat together inside a canopic chest, a box often made from the same stone as the jars and decorated with images of the protective gods. Tutankhamun’s canopic chest was a nested structure: an outer shrine surrounding an inner calcite box, with each jar fitted into its own compartment inside.
Organs That Were Not Stored in Jars
Not every organ was removed. The heart was deliberately left inside the body because Egyptians believed it was the seat of intelligence and identity. In their understanding of the afterlife, the heart would be weighed against a feather to judge whether the person had lived a worthy life. Removing it would have stripped the dead of any chance at an eternal existence.
The brain received very different treatment. Embalmers extracted it through the nose by perforating the thin bone between the nasal cavity and the skull, a technique found in about two-thirds of studied mummies. Studies of child mummies show that embalmers sometimes skipped brain removal in children under three, likely to avoid damaging their fragile facial bones. After extraction, the empty skull cavity was sometimes filled with resin or packed with folded linen. The brain itself was discarded. Egyptians saw it as unimportant, essentially packing material inside the head, and it was never preserved in a canopic jar or returned to the body.
The kidneys were also typically left in place inside the body rather than removed and jarred separately.