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Hapi is an Egyptian god represented as a man with the head of a baboon, shown on the lid of the jar. Hapi is one of the four sons of Horus, who help the spirits of the dead on their journey to the afterlife. (Not to be confused with Hapy the god of the Nile.) Hapi protects the jar containing the lungs of the deceased. We have matching canopic jars for Qebehsenuef, Duamutef and Imsety. And we have large Hapi canopic jars or medium-size Hapi canopic jars as well as this small size.
In ancient Egyptian funerary practice, the internal organs had to be removed from the body during mummification to allow complete drying. The heart was placed back in the body, but the other removed organs were wrapped in linen and stored in stone or ceramic jars. When the practice developed during the Old Kingdom, the jars were unornamented. By the end of the First Intermediate Period jars were often decorated with a human head representing the deceased. Early Egyptologists called these jars "Canopic" because of their similarity to other jars decorated with human heads: either the jars dedicated to Osiris in the town of Canopus near Alexandria, or perhaps offering jars for the cult of Canopus, a Greek water deity. During the New Kingdom the practice developed of carving representations of the Sons of Horus on the Canopic jars.
Stuffe & Nonsense Egyptian figurines and collectibles are modern manufactured decorative objects, made in the style of ancient Egyptian artifacts.
