Egyptian artCanopic Jar (07.226.1) with a Lid Depicting a Queen (30.8.54)
ca. 1347–1330 BCE or shortly thereafter · New Kingdom, Amarna Period · Dynasty 18
A canopic jar with a queenly lid is viscera given a face: the Egyptian insistence that even hidden organs remain someone.
Mercury 91 is not affiliated with The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Images and object data shown here are public-domain Open Access (CC0) records from The Met collection. Citations are given so you can visit each work on the museum site.
Canopic jars held the lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines, each protected by a son of Horus. This lid is modeled as a queen. The body is distributed, then named again. Egyptian embalming is not erasure. It is filing.
There is a star logic here if you do not force it. Constellations are also viscera of the night, cut into named pieces so the sky can be spoken. A canopic set is the body as a small sky of four directions.
The Met’s record notes the jar and lid as a composite of related royal equipment. That honesty matters. Curated galleries sometimes hide joins. This page should not. The queenly face still does the religious work: a person is looking out from the place where the invisible parts were kept.
In the Temple of Thoth the jar is a quiet colonnade object. It does not compete with sphinxes. It asks a smaller question: what do you keep, and what face do you put on the keeping?
Citation
Canopic Jar (07.226.1) with a Lid Depicting a Queen (30.8.54). ca. 1347–1330 BCE or shortly thereafter. Travertine (Egyptian alabaster), blue glass, obsidian, unidentified stone. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 30.8.54. Gift of Theodore M. Davis, 1907 (07.226.1)
Theodore M. Davis Collection, Bequest of Theodore M. Davis, 1915 (30.8.54)
Public-domain Open Access (CC0) photograph. Dimensions: lid: H. 18.2 × Diam. 16.6 cm, 3.9 kg (7 3/16 × 6 9/16 in., 8.6 lb.); jar and lid: H. 53.2 cm (20 15/16 in.)
