The Four Sons of Horus & the Canopic Equipment
Four gods, four jars, four directions — each guarding a piece of the body the embalmers removed.
Also: Four Sons of Horus · Imsety · Hapy · Duamutef · Qebehsenuef · canopic jars · canopic equipment · Isis Nephthys Neith Serqet · viscera
When Egyptians mummified a body, they removed certain internal organs and placed them in four containers — the 'canopic jars' — each under the protection of one of the Four Sons of Horus: Imsety, Hapy, Duamutef, and Qebehsenuef. Each son was paired with a guardian goddess (Isis, Nephthys, Neith, and Serqet) and with one of the four cardinal directions, so that the dismantled body was watched over on every side. From the later New Kingdom the jar lids took the now-familiar human, baboon, jackal, and falcon heads of the four sons.
In short
The four protective deities — Imsety, Hapy, Duamutef, and Qebehsenuef — who guard the internal organs removed during mummification, each associated with a particular organ, a protective goddess, and a cardinal direction; embodied in the four canopic jars.
Where it’s found
Pyramid Texts onward; canopic jars and funerary equipment from the Middle and New Kingdoms
Read it in the Egyptian texts
The passages in our corpus where this idea is discussed — each opens in our reader with the Egyptian transliteration and the English translation side by side.
How the idea developed across Egypt
The Four Sons of Horus appear already in the Pyramid Texts and become firmly attached to the canopic equipment by the Middle and New Kingdoms; the canonical pairing with the four protective goddesses (Isety/Isis, Hapy/Nephthys, Duamutef/Neith, Qebehsenuef/Serqet) and the four cardinal directions is standard in funerary practice, with the distinctive four-headed jar lids becoming usual from the later New Kingdom.
The Four Sons of Horus are deities. Specific organ-, goddess-, and direction-assignments are the standard scheme but show some variation across periods — present the canonical set, hedge minor variants.