18 | Canopic chests

The only things certain in this life, they say, are death and taxes.

So, it is unsurprising that mummification, a process preparing the human body for an eternal life, has fascinated people for millennia.

has fascinated people for millennia.

The process involved many stages as well as various objects that were specifically created to preserve the body and its organs.

A crucial stage of mummification was evisceration, when embalmers would remove the viscera or organs of the abdominal cavity to slow down the body’s decomposition.

The organs would then be dehydrated in a salty substance called natron.

Afterwards they could be placed back into the body, or near it, in packages, jars or chests.

These visceral containers before you are called canopic chests.

You can see each has a lid, and on top of this lid perches the falcon of Sokar, a god of the afterlife who was believed to oversee the funerary rituals that ensured safe passage to the netherworld.

Sokar protects the organs contained in the wooden chests.

Each chest is shaped like a shrine.

The chest from Akhmim even has a pair of bolted doors painted on its front side, as if mimicking a shrine’s doors.

Looking at its other sides, one shows the goddesses Isis and Nephthys opening their wings to protect the mummified body between them.

Another is painted with the two goddesses again, but in their forms as cobras, this time emerging from a pillar headed by Osiris.

The second chest belonged to the priest of Amun, Hornedjitef, and was found in his tomb at Thebes.

The container is intricately decorated.

Even the falcon at the lid is flanked by jackals, creatures of Anubis, god of the cemetery and of mummification.

At the front of the chest, Anubis is again shown but in his human form.

He stands on either side of a shrine surmounted by the head of Osiris, presenting him with offerings of linen bandages and incense.

On each of the chest’s side walls are the mummified figures of the Four Sons of Horus, protectors of the organs.

At its back, the Sons of Horus are painted again, but this time they are shown at either side of a winged scarab holding up the solar disc of rebirth.

Between its back legs is the shen-ring of eternal protection and, if you look to the bottom of its wings, you will see that it is being lifted by ankh signs, symbolising the timeless connection between life and rebirth.