Canopic Jar with Lid (1540–1296 BCE): Art, History and Details

Canopic Jar with Lid (1540–1296 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Embellished tulle strips delicately wrap around the length of the Dior gown like linen covering a mummified body. As European artists in the 1800s who journeyed to Egypt drew what they saw, for the Dior collection he designed, John Galliano sketched his experiences in Egypt to develop this theatrical collection, merging additional inspirations of medical bandages and fetish fashion. In ancient Egypt, mummification was the most sacred practice performed. Rituals, such as removing organs and placing them in canopic jars, like the one here, and wrapping bodies and putting them in coffins, helped ensure the deceased’s safe passage into the afterlife.

Object facts

• Title: Canopic Jar with Lid
• Date: 1540–1296 BCE
• Culture: Egypt, New Kingdom (1540–1069 BCE), Dynasty 18
• Type: Funerary Equipment
• Technique: limestone
• Dimensions: Diameter: 23 cm (9 1/16 in.); Diameter of mouth: 10.6 cm (4 3/16 in.); Overall: 48.4 cm (19 1/16 in.)
• Collection: Egypt - New Kingdom
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1914.630

A detail from the museum

Canopic jars are named after the Greek sailor Canopus, who was said to be buried at Canopus (Abuqir) in the western Nile delta and worshipped there in the form of a human-headed jar that was actually a form of Osiris and had nothing to do with internal organs. But the term has stuck.

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. Catalogue of the Inaugural Exhibition June 6-September 20, 1916. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1916.
• Williams, Caroline Ransom. "The Egyptian Collection in the Museum of Art at Cleveland, OH," Journal of East Asian Archaeology 5 (1918).
• Berman, Lawrence M., and Kenneth J. Bohač. Catalogue of Egyptian Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.