Canopic Jar Lid
Description
Object Label: The eyes and eyebrows of this female head were once inlaid. Their shapes, the woman's smiling little mouth, and the holes in her lobes for earrings suggest that the head was carved during the reign of Amenhotep III or one of his successors at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty or, more probably, during the Nineteenth Dynasty. The flaring wig is hollow, a feature that suggests this head was not part of a statue but was made as the lid of a jar. However, in this period, canopic jars, made to contain the internal organs of the deceased, had lids in the shapes of gods' heads. Human-headed jar lids are rare. Caption: Canopic Jar Lid, ca. 1390–1185 B.C.E.. Wood, 5 5/16 x 5 7/8 x 5 11/16 in. (13.5 x 15 x 14.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Ernest Erickson Foundation, Inc., 86.226.35. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
Photograph of a carved wooden canopic jar lid in the form of a human head with a broad wig and facial features.
The object is displayed on a museum plinth. It appears to be the lid of a canopic jar carved in wood: a stylized human face with painted/aged surface, large almond-shaped eyes, defined eyebrows, and a mouth with lips. The figure wears an oversized wig/headdress covering the top of the head, extending down at the sides; beneath the face, a neck-like extension suggests attachment to the jar. No clear hieroglyphic inscription, cartouche, or deity emblem is visible on the lid in this image. In the background, a glass case includes small text on a label, but the inscription on the object itself is not legible. The catalog ground truth specifies wooden material and a late New Kingdom date; the visible artifact features (human-headed canopic-lid style) are consistent with that general identification.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 86.226.35 tier-2
- BKM-Object 4252 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.