Imsety

Imsety is attested as one of a quartet called the Four Sons of Horus and is described in funerary tradition as a son of Horus (often Horus the Elder) and an unnamed goddess. Within the Horus/Osiris funerary framework the Four Sons function as named guardians of the internal organs removed during evisceration and embalming, integrated into the mortuary theology that links divine kinship, preservation of the body, and the deceased's successful passage to the afterlife.

Imsety is portrayed in a human form, most commonly as a mummiform human figure (a wrapped human-headed deity). In material culture he appears as the human-headed lid of canopic jars and as small faience amulets; this human-headed iconography for Imsety is consistent from early attestations through the New Kingdom and later periods.

Imsety's primary role is protective and restorative in the funerary domain: he is invoked to guard a specific internal organ removed during mummification (most commonly the liver in many attestations, though organ-to-deity mappings sometimes varied) and to ensure that the deceased's body parts are preserved and may be returned or function in the afterlife. He is named in ritual and funerary spell lists (e.g., Coffin Text/Book of the Dead contexts cited in the sources) and appears as part of sets of protective amulets and canopic equipment.