Canopic Jars or What the Egyptians Did with the Dead’s Vital Organs
By Kathleen Calby
October 15, 2023
October 15, 2023
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To think they jarred
the mess, remains for vultures and jackals, like peaches or green beans to preserve them. Four deemed worthy, or because these decomposed fast: lungs, stomach, liver, and intestines. Contained, at first, in hand-built pottery, later carved alabaster or limestone. Each organ guarded by one of Horus’s sons, so their heads sat atop. The heart saved in the body, known as it was to be the seat of the soul, the center of thought. While, the brain, that useless mass, siphoned from the skull with a pipe up the nose, tossed. |
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Kathleen Calby calls the Blue Ridge Mountains home and hosts writer events for the North Carolina Writers Network in Henderson County. After she moved South several years ago, she learned the pleasures of fried chicken, barbeque and fresh doughnuts and the benefit of walking in the hills. Her work appears in Broad River Review, San Pedro River Review and New Plains Review, among other publications. Named a 2022 Rash Award Poetry Finalist. Kathleen’s chapbook Flirting with Owls was published in 2023 by Kelsay Books.
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