Research Files: Anubis, Egyptian God of the Dead

Disclaimer: I am not a mythology scholar. I am simply interested in myths and how they shape human behavior and stories. The post below is a synthesis of my research about Anubis and my personal thoughts and should not be taken as verified fact, though I have done my best to ensure its accuracy. This is meant to be a brief, fun introduction to the myth and not an academic resource. My sources are included at the end of the post.

Who Was Anubis?

Anubis, also called Anpu, was the ancient Egyptian god of the dead, though people only worshipped him as the ruler of the afterlife until the Middle Kingdom period (2055-1650 BCE) when Osiris took over that role. This god is one of the most recognized figures in ancient Egyptian history, as well as one of the most illustrated.

Rather than ruling the dead as Lord, Anubis protected and cared for them. During the First Dynasty (c. 3100 – c. 2890 BCE) he watched over graves. During a later period, he is credited as being the inventor of the embalming process, a ritual used to preserve corpses before mummification, and he oversaw the process for each newly dead soul. From around 664-332 BCE, he also attended a ceremony called the Weighing of the Heart, during which he placed a dead person’s heart opposite the Feather of Truth (Ma’at) on a scale. If the heart weighed more than the feather, the spirit Ammit consumed it and the person’s soul faded from existence. If the heart and the feather balanced the scales, the person’s soul ascended to a heavenly afterlife. In this way, Anubis was a guide for the dead, ushering souls to their eternal home.

Important Characteristics

Illustrations show Anubis as a black jackal or a human male with the head of a jackal. However, the animal form he’s modeled after has since, in a genetic study in 2015, been identified as the African wolf instead of the African golden jackal.

The dog part of the god was black for symbolic reasons – to represent the color bodies turn after being treated for mummification, as well as the fertile soil near the Nile and the possibility of rebirth in the afterlife.

One scholarly theory suggests Anubis takes the form of a jackal because the animals, and others like them, used to dig up corpses from the shallow graves in cemeteries. So, the people needed a stronger being of the same type to fend of fend off threats.

This god also has many epithets alluding to the many roles he played in protecting and caring for corpses and their souls.

Like many gods from many other religions, Anubis’ parentage isn’t clear, but it doesn’t seem to play too much into his role in history.

When the Greeks ruled Egypt (350–30 BC), Anubis merged with the Greek god Hermes to become Hermanubis, since they served similar roles guiding souls to the afterlife.

Anubis in Egyptian Mythology

The god of the dead isn’t featured in many Egyptian myths, but he is well-respected and worshipped because knowing their bodies and souls would be cared for after death gave people hope.

One story, however, states Anubis once bested Set after Set turned himself into a leopard and attempted to attack Osiris’s dead body. Anubis not only stopped Set, but also branded and flayed him. The god of the dead then wore the leopard skin to warn anyone else trying to mess with the tombs. Message received, Anubis.

How to Use the Egyptian God of the Dead as Inspiration

A few prompts to get the creative juices flowing:

What are you story world’s beliefs about death?
Is there an afterlife, and if so, how do souls get there?
Is there a spiritual being that guides them?
What is the function of animals in your story world? Are they pets? Deities? A source of food?
How do deities’ roles change throughout time, and why?
What rituals surrounding life and death do your characters participate in, and what are their relationships to them?
Is there a threat in your story that inspires your characters to enlist an animal or other kind of being for help?

Want more ancient Egyptian mythology? Check out the Archive.