Anubis- Egyptian GodDeity"Lord of the Sacred Land"

The Jackal's Watch

Jackals prowled the desert cemeteries at dusk, tawny shapes threading between the graves. Rather than curse them as scavengers, the Egyptians made the jackal divine. Anubis stood guard over the necropolis from the plateaus above the Nile valley. "He Who is Upon His Mountain," the Egyptians called him: the god who watched from the heights where the desert met the world of the living.

His color set him apart from the animals he resembled. Anubis was painted black: not the black of death, but of kemet, the rich Nile silt that gave Egypt its ancient name. The same mud the flood deposited each year, from which new crops rose.

Anubis already appears in the oldest royal tombs of the First Dynasty. The Pyramid Texts speak of him receiving dead kings, anointing their bodies, preparing them for eternity. He ruled the underworld alone in those early centuries. When Osiris's cult rose to prominence, Anubis yielded the throne but kept his purpose, becoming Osiris's devoted son and foremost servant in the realm below.

Son of the Shadows

Plutarch preserves the most widely known account of Anubis's birth. Nephthys, wife of Set, disguised herself as her sister Isis and lay with Osiris. Ashamed of the pregnancy and terrified of Set's fury, she abandoned the infant in the wilderness. Isis found the child with the help of dogs and raised him as her own. Anubis grew devoted to both mothers and to his father.

When Set murdered Osiris and scattered his body across Egypt, Anubis's grief drove him to develop the arts of embalming. He ceded the kingship of the underworld to his reassembled father and took up the stations he would hold forever: embalmer, guide, judge.

The First Embalmer

Anubis worked alongside Isis and Nephthys to gather the scattered pieces of Osiris. He cleansed the flesh, treated it with sacred unguents, and wrapped the reassembled body in linen. The first mummy. Osiris rose as lord of the dead, and every mummy made thereafter followed the pattern Anubis had set.

In the wabet, the purification tent, priests wearing jackal masks became Anubis incarnate. Over seventy days they preserved the flesh with natron and cedar oil, then wrapped it in hundreds of meters of linen inscribed with protective spells. The Ritual of Embalming preserves the god's words to the deceased: "I have come to protect you. Your form will be renewed daily. I have given you your head, and I have joined your bones." Pairs of imiut fetishes, headless stuffed animal skins suspended from poles, flanked the workshop. Two were found in Tutankhamun's tomb.

The Opening of the Mouth

Before entombment, the Opening of the Mouth ceremony restored the dead to their senses. A priest in a jackal mask touched the mummy's mouth, eyes, and ears with an adze and chisel, each touch accompanied by a spell that awakened the corresponding faculty. Without this rite, the body was preserved flesh and nothing more. With it, the deceased could eat, drink, and speak in the realm of Osiris.

The same rite was performed for over two thousand years, from the Old Kingdom through the Ptolemaic period. Tomb paintings at Deir el-Medina show it in full: the mummy held upright before the tomb entrance, mourners wailing behind, the jackal-masked priest reaching forward with the sacred adze.

Sacred Dogs and the Jackal's Reach

Anubis's primary cult center was Hardai, which the Greeks called Cynopolis: Dog City. Sacred dogs and jackals were kept there, fed, and upon death carefully mummified in his honor. The dog cemeteries at Saqqara contained thousands of canid mummies, each wrapped and interred as a votive offering.

But Anubis received devotion wherever death occurred, which meant everywhere in Egypt. His image appeared in tombs from the humblest to the most royal. The recumbent Anubis from Tutankhamun's tomb, painted black and gilded with gold, crouches alert atop a portable shrine. Small shrines stood in homes, and amulets bearing his image were worn against untimely death.

Under the Ptolemies, Anubis merged with Hermes to form Hermanubis, depicted with a jackal's head and Hermes's caduceus. His cult spread across the Roman Empire, with inscriptions found as far as the Danube provinces.

Guide of the Dead

Anubis met the newly deceased at the boundary between the living world and the Duat. He took them by the hand and led them through darkness toward the Hall of Two Truths. The Coffin Texts describe him silencing demons and driving back hostile spirits, clearing the passage for the dead.

This role set him apart from Wepwawet, the "Opener of the Ways," another canid god who led processions but was tied to military roads and the pathways of the sky. Where Wepwawet opened the road, Anubis walked it beside you.

The Weighing of the Heart

In the Hall of Two Truths, Anubis crouches beneath a great balance scale. On one pan he places the heart of the deceased. On the other rests the feather of Ma'at. He steadies the beam with one hand and adjusts the plumb bob with the other, his jackal ears pricked forward in concentration. Thoth stands nearby with his reed pen to record the result.

If the heart balances the feather, the dead person is declared "true of voice." Anubis takes them by the hand and leads them into the presence of Osiris and the paradise of the Field of Reeds. If the heart sinks heavy, Ammit devours it. The soul ceases to exist.

The Papyrus of Ani preserves the scene in painted detail: Anubis kneeling, the beam level, Thoth writing, and behind them the devourer waiting with her crocodile jaws.