Anubis

The jackal of the necropolis, embalmer and guide of the dead

The black jackal who guards the cemeteries of Egypt: god of embalming, who made the first mummy from the body of Osiris, keeper of the necropolis, guide of the dead to the hall of judgement and the hand on the balance when the heart is weighed. He is among the oldest of the gods, lord of the dead in the Old Kingdom before Osiris took the title, and every embalmer worked under his name and, at the last rites, in his mask. His colour is that of the embalmed body and of the silt of the Nile, both of which promise life; his animal is the dog of the desert that haunted the graves he protects.

Family

Parents

Osiris Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride

his father in the late telling; the body he embalmed
Nephthys Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride

Seth's wife, with whom Osiris lay taking her for Isis; she exposed the child
Hesat or Bastet Pyramid Texts; Coffin Texts

in the older texts he is the son of the cow Hesat, of the cat Bastet or of Ra himself; no single tree was ever settled

Foster mother

Isis Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride

found the child with the help of dogs and made him her guardian

Children

Qebehut Pyramid Texts

the serpent who pours cool water for the dead; “daughter of Anubis”

Companion

Wepwawet Pyramid Texts; stela of Ikhernofret

“opener of the ways”, the other jackal of the necropolis; the two shared Asyut and were often confused

His stories

The foundling

Nephthys, wife of Seth, lay with Osiris, who took her for his wife, and exposed the child she bore for fear of her husband. Isis went looking for him, found him with the help of dogs, and brought him up to be her guard and companion, as dogs guard men.

Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 14; Plutarch adds that a garland of melilot left behind by Osiris betrayed the affair to Isis

The first mummy

When Isis had gathered Osiris's body, Anubis came to prepare it. He washed it, drew out the corruption, filled it with unguents and wrapped it in linen bandages woven by the goddess Tayet, and so made the first mummy, the pattern for all embalming. Ever after, the chief embalmer wore a jackal mask to play his part.

Book of the Dead, spell 151; a mask of this kind, in painted clay, is in the museum at Hildesheim

The leopard's spots

Seth came to the body of Osiris in the form of a leopard to do it harm. Anubis caught him and branded him all over with a hot iron, which is why leopards have spots; he flayed him and wore the skin, and that is why the priests who serve the dead wear a leopard's pelt.

Papyrus Jumilhac (Ptolemaic period), a mythological handbook of the nomes around Cynopolis

The balance

In the Hall of the Two Truths Anubis leads the dead by the hand to the scales, sets the heart on one pan and the feather of Maat on the other, and checks the plumb of the balance while Thoth writes down the result. If the pans are level, he brings the justified to Osiris; if not, the Devourer eats the heart.

Book of the Dead, spell 125 and its vignette; the papyrus of Ani (British Museum), about 1250 BC, is the best-known picture

The jackal

Why the guardian of graves is a dog

The dogs of the desert edge, jackals and wild dogs, dug up the shallow graves of early Egypt and were seen in the cemeteries at dusk. The Egyptians answered as they often did, by turning the danger into the guardian. Anubis is the animal of the necropolis set to defend it: a jackal lying on a shrine with his ears up, or a man with a jackal's head, always black. The colour is not the animal's, which is sandy; it is the colour of the body after embalming and of the mud the Nile leaves, both of which mean life to come. His titles say where he lives: “he who is upon his mountain”, the cliff above the tombs, and “lord of the sacred land”, the cemetery itself.

He is among the oldest gods with a job. A recumbent jackal god, probably Anubis, already appears under the kings of the First Dynasty; in the Pyramid Texts he presides over the embalming booth, and the dead king is told to rise with a jackal's face, like him; the offering formula of the Old Kingdom tombs, “an offering that the king gives and Anubis”, names him before it names Osiris. When Osiris rose to be lord of the dead, Anubis handed over the title “foremost of the Westerners” and became his servant and, in Plutarch's time, his son.

The embalmer

Seventy days in the place of embalming

Mummification was his craft. The Egyptians kept the body because the person could not last without it, and Anubis was the one who had done it first, for Osiris. The embalmers' workshop was the “place of embalming” and its chief the “overseer of the mysteries”, who at the decisive moments put on a jackal mask; one such mask, in painted clay with holes to see through at the neck, survives at Hildesheim. In the Book of the Dead, spell 151, Anubis stands at the bier with his hands on the mummy, and in the tomb of Sennedjem at Deir el-Medina he bends over the body on its lion couch. The seventy days of embalming that Herodotus describes were his, and so was the last rite at the tomb door, the opening of the mouth, performed on the mummy while a priest in the jackal mask holds it upright from behind.

He came to his office as a foundling. Plutarch tells how Nephthys, Seth's wife, lay with Osiris, who took her for Isis, and abandoned the child for fear of her husband. The rest he tells, in paraphrase, like this: Isis looked for the child and found him, with great difficulty, because dogs led her to him; she brought him up, and he became her guard and attendant under the name of Anubis, and is said to guard the gods as dogs guard men (De Iside et Osiride 14).

The guide and the balance

From Cynopolis to Hermanubis

The living met him at the tomb; the dead met him again in the hall of judgement, where he leads the newcomer by the hand to the balance and kneels to check its plumb. The papyrus of Hunefer, painted in the reign of Seti I, has the jackal-headed god doing both, in a scene that everyone who could afford a Book of the Dead wanted for himself. He was worshipped wherever there was a cemetery, and had a city of his own, Hardai in Middle Egypt, which the Greeks named Cynopolis, “city of the dogs”; a Ptolemaic papyrus from that district, the Papyrus Jumilhac, is a handbook of his local myths, in which he catches Seth in the form of a leopard and brands him, giving the priests of the dead their spotted robe.

The Greeks and Romans, who found a god with a dog's head strange, matched him with Hermes, guide of souls, and worshipped him in Egypt as Hermanubis. In Rome his statues stood in the temples of Isis, and his mask, black and gold, led her processions; Apuleius calls him the messenger between the upper world and the lower, which is what he had been for the Egyptians all along: the one god who crossed easily between the living and the dead.