From http://isis_athena1690.tripod.com/C.html

"The name 'Canopic' comes from Greek Mythology. Canopus (Kanopus) was a steersman of the King Menelaus (Helen of Troy’s husband). They briefly stopped in Egypt on their way home from Troy. While there, Canopus insulted Theonoe, the daughter of Pharaoh Proteus. In retribution, he was bitten by a snake and died. He was buried at a city in the Nile Delta called Canopus (by the Greeks); modern day Abukir. It appears that there a cult of him grew up in the Greco-Roman period, where he was depicted as a jar with a human head. Because the statues of him were jar shaped, the early archaeologists confused the statues with the modernly known and completely unrelated 'Canopic Jars,' which contained the human viscera."