canopic jars

The Canopic Chest of King Tut was recently featured in a video with Dr Janice Kamrin, as she walks around the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and explains what this beautiful artefact would have been used for (Skip to the video by clicking here). As one of the treasures of the Cairo Museum, it was photographed in stunning detail by the established Egyptology photographer Sandro Vannini, and the images are bought to the Internet by Heritage Key.

As we described in our recent handy guide to how to make a mummy, the ancient Egyptians went to great and grizzly lengths to ensure that every last bit of a body was efficiently preserved. The internal organs had to be removed in order to effectively dry out a corpse. They would then be individually wrapped and preserved separately in canopic vessels.

Heritage Key has posted a new video clip on the process of mummification. Mummification Featuring Zahi Hawass is a video by Nico Piazza, featuring still-photography by Sandro Vannini. In the video Dr. Hawass is examining an unidentified (in the video, at least) mummy found quite serendipitously in a tomb at Saqqara. Once the cover is removed, I can’t quite make out if we are looking at a mask and other protective covering, or if it is an internal coffin, but the paintwork is vivid and very beautiful.