Invented embalming by wrapping the first mummy, the body of the murdered king
Priests wore his jackal mask to perform the rite.
Myth · Egyptian
Anubis
Egyptian mythology — god of embalming and the necropolis
The jackal-headed god of mummification, cemeteries and the passage to the afterlife. He invented embalming on the body of Osiris, guards the necropolis, leads the dead into the hall of judgement and adjusts the scales that weigh the heart. Before Osiris rose to prominence he was the chief god of the dead; afterwards he became the undertaker of the gods.
How to spot them
- ▸A black jackal or a jackal-headed man, often shown bending over a mummy on its bier
- ▸Black not for decay but for the fertile Nile silt and the resin of embalming
- ▸Kneels at the balance in the judgement scene, steadying the plumb line
- ▸Quiz clue: 'Opening of the Mouth', 'Cynopolis', 'he who is upon his mountain', 'the Imiut fetish'
Stories & episodes
Adjusts the scales as the heart is weighed against the feather of truth
Book of the Dead spell 125; Thoth records the verdict.
Performs the rite that lets a mummy eat, breathe and speak again
The Opening of the Mouth, using an adze on the face of the coffin.
Guards the necropolis, earning the epithet 'he who is upon his mountain'
Also 'foremost of the westerners' before that title passed to Osiris.
A headless stuffed animal skin hanging from a pole is his emblem
The Imiut fetish, found in royal burials from the First Dynasty.
Fused with Hermes into a Graeco-Roman god of the Alexandrian cemeteries
Hermanubis, shown with a human head and a caduceus.
The seal on Tutankhamun's treasury door carried a recumbent black figure of him
The shrine of Anubis on its sledge, found intact in 1922.
Quick-fire facts
- •His Egyptian name is Inpu or Anpu; the Greeks called him Anoubis
- •His animal is usually taken to be a golden jackal or an African wolf of the desert margins
- •His main cult centre was Hardai, which the Greeks called Cynopolis, 'dog city'
- •Epithets include 'foremost of the westerners', 'lord of the sacred land' and 'he who is in the place of embalming'
- •Late tradition made him a son of Osiris and Nephthys, raised by Isis
- •The Anubis shrine from Tutankhamun's tomb is one of the most reproduced objects in the Cairo Museum
- •Wepwawet, 'opener of the ways', is a separate but similar canine god of Asyut
- •In Graeco-Roman Egypt he merged with Hermes as Hermanubis, the psychopomp
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- Richard H. Wilkinson — The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
- Jan Assmann — Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt