Sharif Shoaier: “So you're leading me straight to my favourite piece, I think, in the whole museum.”
Dr Janice Kamrin: “It's really beautiful, isn't it? It is the canopic shrine. This is where Tutankhamun's viscera were stored. The Egyptians figured out that in order to mummify the body properly, you know, in other words, preserve it by drying, it made sense to take out the innards, because they hold moisture and they really added to the speed of the decay. So they would make an incision and they would pull out the lungs and the stomach and the intestines and the liver. And put them in four separate packets and mummify them separately basic.”
Sharif Shoaier: “Separately?”
Dr Janice Kamrin: “Separately. Each of the four packages. And they would put them, in the beginning, they put them into compartments and then later put them in jars. So the most time the jars, as we'll see, are actually compartments, but I'll show you that in a minute.”
Sharif Shoaier: “All right.”
Dr Janice Kamrin: “What happens is each of those vicera are packaged separately and each is protected by one of the four sons of Horus, which are the sort of demigods. And important protective goddesses.”
Sharif Shoaier: “Four goddesses around?”
Dr Janice Kamrin: “One for each of the packages of vicera. So, here we have one of the most important goddesses in Egyptian mythology, Isis. And you know who she is, because she's got her name on her head. That's her name (points). And here is actually my favorite one (points) around that corner here, that's Serket or Selkit, and she is the scorpion goddess. You can see she's got a scorpion on her head.”
Sharif Shoaier: “The scorpion.”
Dr Janice Kamrin: “So that's her name means 'scorpion'. That is the interesting thing, which we can also see on the big shrines: as you can see here and here and here and on her back – these are assembly instructions. They took this stuff apart and they put it together according to these instructions. They tell 'put this here, attach this here..' (laughs) Inside this...(points to the canopic chest)”
Sharif Shoaier: “They found...” (go to the canopic chest)
Dr Janice Kamrin: “Was this beautiful canopic chest. This is the shrine and inside it's like a nest thing, it's all layers of protection. The more you protect everything, the better. This is where the actual vicera were stored. Now, this might look like a bunch of jars sitting inside this chest, but this is one solid block of the Egyptian alabaster.”
Sharif Shoaier: “Solid block?”
Dr Janice Kamrin: “U-huh. And inside the separate compartments here, are these beautiful - which we can see are jewellery - these beautiful miniature gold inlay coffinettes with the actual vicera wrapped inside. So there is each inside, we will see those later. Also notice the goddesses are protecting the corners again, you know, doing there. The same four. And inscribed here are spells spoke by the goddesses same: 'I'm protecting'. They're actually protecting the gods that are representing and protecting vicera themselves, if that makes sense. Did you follow that?”
Sharif Shoaier: “Yes, I absolutely followed that.”
Dr Janice Kamrin: “This beautiful shrine was protecting the entrance to the treasury and protecting – see this canopic shrine behind him?”
Sharif Shoaier:”Yes.”
Dr Janice Kamrin: “So, Anubis. Shall we go look at Anubis?”
Sharif Shoaier: “Let's go have a look.”
Dr Janice Kamrin: “Let's go look at Anubis.” (go to Anubis case)
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