Kanopy v době Staré říše

• Authors: Jirásková Lucie

Title variants

EN

Canopic jars of the Old Kingdom

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

Canopic jars represent one of the sources of evidence of the early stages of the mummification process. However, most of the jars have been found empty without any traces of the original contents. Only several instances of wrapped packages have been discovered either inside the jars or within the heap of their fragments. As they appeared only in the Memphite area tombs, it seems that the presence of canopic jars in the private tombs represented merely an imitation of a piece of royal burial equipment, for most of the Old Kingdom bodies bear no traces of evisceration. The shape of the canopic jars is inspired by the tall shouldered jars commonly used until the beginning of the Old Kingdom, and in limited examples even later. The original shape underwent slight changes in order to become suitable for new contents, i.e. above all there is a widening of the mouth which made it wider than the base. The jars seem to have been called nmst jars, and are often represented within the scenes of stone vessel workshops. Their shape also very much resembles the shape of model stone shouldered jars. As four of them appear in complete sets, these model jars might represent the models of canopic jars within the sets of model stone vessels deposited within the Old Kingdom tombs.

Keywords

EN

Old Kingdom; canopic jars; stone vessels

Discipline

• ARCHAEOLOGY: ARCHAEOLOGY

• Publisher: Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts, Czech Republic
• Journal: Pražské egyptologické studie (Prague Egyptological Studies)
• Year: 2014
• Issue: 13
• Pages: 49-55

Contributors

author

Jirásková Lucie

• Český egyptologický ústav FF UK, Celetná 20, 110 00 Praha 1