Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner in Cairo for $325 in November 1913, through the painter Joseph Lindon Smith (1863-1950).
Dimensions
35 cm (13 3/4 in.)
Display Media
Alabaster
Web Commentary
Canopic jars preserved the internal organs of the deceased in ancient Egypt. Embalming the dead was an important part of Egyptian death rituals and ensured passage of the spirit into the afterlife. Isabella Stewart Gardner’s friend Joseph Lindon Smith, an artist who documented murals excavated at archaeological sites in Egypt for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, helped her to acquire this jar in 1913.
Permanent Gallery Location
Early Italian Room
Bibliography
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 101. (Egyptian, Middle Kingdom or 18th Dynasty; cover is likely not original)Betty Chamberlain. “Italian Rooms” in Alfred M. Frankfurter (ed). The Gardner Collection (New York, 1946), p. 9.Clara Strauss. “Notes, Records, Comments.” Gardner Museum Calendar of Events 9, no. 32 (10 Apr. 1966), p. 2. (Egyptian, Middle Kingdom or 18th Dynasty)Cornelius C. Vermeule III et al. Sculpture in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1977), p. 1, no. 1. (Egyptian, New Kingdom or later, 1570-1085 BCE)
Rights and reproductions
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Canopic jars preserved the internal organs of the deceased in ancient Egypt. Embalming the dead was an important part of Egyptian death rituals and ensured passage of the spirit into the afterlife. Isabella Stewart Gardner’s friend Joseph Lindon Smith, an artist who documented murals excavated at archaeological sites in Egypt for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, helped her to acquire this jar in 1913.
