The Hall of Two Truths lies silent. On one side of the scale rests the heart of the deceased; on the other, the feather of Ma’at. The jackal-headed god watches, his hand steady on the beam. If the heart balances, the soul passes into the Field of Reeds. If it tips, the Devourer waits. Anubis is the Egyptian psychopomp, the jackal-headed god who guides souls through the underworld, embalms the dead, and weighs their hearts. He is the oldest funerary deity in the Egyptian pantheon, attested as early as the First Dynasty, c. 3100 BCE, in the tomb of King Aha at Abydos.
How the Jackal Became the Guide
The ancient Egyptians buried their dead in shallow desert graves. Jackals scavenged the fringes of the necropolis, their howls at dusk the only sound between the living and the dead. The Egyptians did not mistake the jackal for a pest. They saw the animal as a protector, one who walked the boundary between the world of the living and the Duat. That observation shaped the earliest iconography of Anubis: a black jackal, or a man with a jackal’s head, lying on a shrine or standing guard over the tomb.
The name Anubis is the Greek form of the Egyptian Inpu (or Anpu). The root may mean “to decay” or “to be royal,” but the Egyptians themselves told no single myth of his origin. The Pyramid Texts, the oldest religious corpus in the world (c. 2400 BCE), already name him as the god who “opens the ways” for the king’s soul. In Utterance 359, Anubis is called “the lord of the sacred land,” the necropolis. He is the one who washes the dead, who binds the linen bandages, who makes the body whole for the journey.
The city of Cynopolis (the modern Qais) in the 17th nome of Upper Egypt was his cult center. Greek writers later called it “Dog City,” and the inhabitants kept jackals sacred. Pilgrims brought offerings of milk, honey, and wine to the temple. The priests wore jackal masks during funerary rites, embodying the god for the duration of the ceremony.
The Scale and the Feather
Anubis does not judge the dead. That work belongs to Osiris, the lord of the underworld. Anubis prepares the dead for judgment. He conducts the Opening of the Mouth ritual, which restores the senses of the mummy: the ability to breathe, eat, speak, and see. Without this rite, the soul could not answer the questions of the Forty-Two Assessors in the Hall of Two Truths.
The weighing of the heart is the central act of the judgment. Anubis adjusts the counterweight, his hand on the plummet. The heart, the seat of the soul’s intentions, is placed on one pan. On the other, the feather of Ma’at, representing truth, order, and cosmic balance. Thoth records the result. If the heart is light, the soul is declared “true of voice” and enters the afterlife. If the heart is heavy with sin, the scale tips, and Ammit, the Devourer, swallows the soul into oblivion.
The Book of the Dead, the collection of spells and illustrations that guided the dead through the Duat, shows Anubis at every critical threshold. Spell 17 describes him as “the god who is in the place of embalming, the chief of the divine booth.” The vignettes show him standing beside the mummy, his hand on the coffin, or leading the soul by the hand into the presence of Osiris.
What the Black Skin Means
Anubis is almost always depicted in black, not the tan or brown of the sand. Black is the color of the fertile Nile silt, the soil that brought life to the fields. It is also the color of the mummy’s skin after the embalming salts had done their work. The black jackal is not a natural animal; it is a deliberate symbol of the transformation that death brings. The body becomes black, but from that blackness, new life rises.
The jackal head itself carries meaning. The jackal is a nocturnal animal, a creature of the margins. It sees in the dark. Anubis, therefore, is the one who sees what the living cannot: the path through the Duat, the hidden dangers, the moments when the soul falters. He is not a fearful figure. He is the guide who knows the way.
We have seen the jackal at the edge of the cemetery, standing still, watching. It is not a threat. It is a reminder that the boundary between the living and the dead is porous, and that someone must walk it.
The Hands That Embalm
The practical work of Anubis is the most concrete. He is the inventor of embalming, the first mummy-maker. In the myth of Osiris, after Set murdered and dismembered Osiris, Isis and Nephthys gathered the scattered pieces. But it was Anubis who wrapped the body in linen and performed the first rites. The Egyptians called him “the one who is in the place of embalming,” and the chief embalmer in any funeral wore the mask of Anubis.
The process was precise. The body was washed with palm wine, then packed with natron, a natural salt, for forty days. The organs were removed, except the heart, and placed in canopic jars. The jars were often carved with the heads of the four sons of Horus, but Anubis guarded the whole process. The incision on the left side of the abdomen, where the embalmers removed the organs, was called “the wound of Anubis.” The priests who made the cut were ritually reviled and chased away with stones, because they had touched the sacred body.
The mummy was then wrapped in layers of linen, each layer holding amulets. The most important amulet was the tyet, the knot of Isis, but the heart scarab, placed over the chest, was inscribed with a spell from the Book of the Dead that commanded the heart not to speak against its owner. Anubis was invoked in the spells, and his image was painted on the coffins.
How the Living Called on Him
Anubis was not only a god of the dead. The living also invoked him. Merchants traveling through the desert left offerings at his shrines, asking for safe passage through dangerous territory. The boundary between the desert and the cultivated land was the domain of the jackal, and Anubis was the lord of that boundary.
The festival of Anubis, called the “Feast of the Good Reunion,” was celebrated in the second month of the season of Peret, roughly January. The festival involved the procession of the god’s statue from the temple to the necropolis, where the priests performed rituals for the dead. The Greeks who settled in Egypt during the Ptolemaic period syncretized Anubis with Hermes, producing Hermanubis, a god who combined the psychopomp functions of both. Hermanubis was depicted as a jackal-headed man wearing the caduceus, the staff of Hermes. A cult of Hermanubis existed in Alexandria and spread as far as Rome.
Anubis, Charon, and the Psychopomps of Other Traditions
The comparison is inevitable. The Greeks had Hermes Psychopompos, who led souls to the Styx. The Romans had Charon, the ferryman. The Norse had Valkyries who chose the slain. The difference is that Anubis does not simply transport the dead. He makes them whole. The Egyptian soul had five parts: the ka, the ba, the akh, the ren, and the sheut. Anubis ensured that all five could reunite in the tomb. Without his work, the soul could not survive.
Where Hermes conducts the soul to the underworld, Anubis greets the soul at the entrance and guides it through the judgment. He is not a messenger. He is a guardian and a craftsman. The body is the soul’s vessel, and Anubis preserves the vessel so the soul can return to it. That is why the Egyptians mummified. They were not afraid of the dead. They were providing a home for the soul.
What People Get Wrong About Anubis
The most common error is to call Anubis the “god of death.” He is not. He is the god of the process of dying and the journey of the dead. Osiris is the god of the dead, the ruler of the underworld. Anubis is the god who handles the body and the soul before they reach Osiris. The distinction matters.
Another mistake is to confuse Anubis with Set. Set is the god of chaos, the murderer of Osiris. Set is also depicted with an animal head, but it is not a jackal. It is a mysterious creature called the Set animal, with a curved snout, square ears, and a forked tail. The resemblance is superficial. Anubis and Set are opposites: Anubis restores what Set destroyed.
The idea that Anubis is evil or demonic comes from a misunderstanding of the jackal. The jackal is a scavenger, but scavenging is not wrong. It is a function. The dead are not unclean. They are holy. Anubis protects them from corruption, spiritual and physical.
FAQ
Was Anubis worshipped as a living animal?
Yes. In Cynopolis, jackals were kept in the temple and venerated. When one died, it was mummified and buried with honors.
Why is Anubis shown with a jackal head and a human body?
The hybrid form represents the meeting of the human and the animal, the conscious and the instinctual. The jackal’s head gives the god the ability to see in the dark of the underworld.
Is Anubis mentioned in the Bible?
Not directly. However, some scholars have linked the name Anubis to the Greek Anubis, and the Egyptian influence on the Book of the Dead has been compared to the imagery of the Book of Revelation.
How do we invoke Anubis in modern practice?
We light a black candle in a fireproof bowl, place a small statue or image of Anubis, and recite the spell from the Book of the Dead for “the heart of the one who is true of voice.” We do not call him lightly. He is old, and he is patient.
The God Who Waits
Anubis is not a god of sorrow. He is a god of transition. The embalming table, the scale, the open road: these are his tools. When the soul hesitates at the threshold, he is there. The jackal stands in the shadow of the tomb, and the heart is weighed. The rest is silence.
For more on the gods who walk between the worlds, see our guide to necromancy. The symbols of Egyptian funerary magic are detailed in the glossary. You may also wish to read the related guide on the Book of the Dead.