The Creepiest Jar Cover

 This jar cover is creepy even if—or because—it looks

like a mini bust of Jose Rizal.

I know, of course, what burial jars are. They contain dead people. They contain exhumed bones of dead people. They’re small coffins. Despite this fact, they never gave me the creeps. Until I saw one jar cover in Museum of the Filipino People.

The jar cover is one of only three specimens from Kulaman Plateau. While the two others are jars with intact lids, this one is a lid only. It is made of limestone at the bottom and the middle and of clay at the top. It’s a bust. The base is shaped like an inverted bowl. The middle, forming the chest, is a simple short cylinder carved with tiny arms on the sides. The head part is what makes the artifact Halloween-y. It really looks like the face of a human being, and because the material has crumbled, it looks as though one of the eyes is winking at the onlooker and the mouth is forming a maniacal grin.

I wonder why the clay lid looks creepy when the anthropomorphic jar covers that are purely made of limestone are not exactly angelic. Only a very few of them look like real human beings. The others look like lizards (on purpose), penises (on purpose), or monkeys (probably not on purpose). Maybe the reason is that crumbling limestone figures, whatever they may be depicting, look like crumbling stones, nothing more, while crumbling clay looks like decomposing flesh—a much clearer reminder that the jars are not just archaeological artifacts. They contain dead people. They contain exhumed bones of dead people. They’re small coffins.


Don’t confuse the Museum of the Filipino People with the National Museum.
The former is inside Luneta Park and contains archaeological artifacts. The latter,
just across the street, contains mostly paintings and sculptures.