The preservation of the body was essential for the ancient Egyptian to live again in the afterlife. Ancient Egyptians believed that the human body contains the soul Ba and the guardian spirit Ka through which resurrection was thought to take place.

In the process of mummification, the extracted internal organs of the deceased were preserved in four pottery or stone jars covered with stoppers in the shape of the heads of four deities known as the four sons of Horus. These were: Imsti, human-headed deity who protected the liver of the deceased; Hapi, baboon-faced deity who protected the lungs; Duamutef, jackal-faced deity who protected the stomach; and Qebehsenuef, falcon-headed deity who protected the intestines.

The first scholars of ancient culture called these containers canopic jars, after the Greek "Canopus", the name given to a village near Alexandria presently known as Abukir, which produced the famous ceramic jars with Osiris-form stoppers. The mummification and the canopic jars were also used at the necropolis of Kom el Shuqafa with three other styles of burial.