Anubis

Anubis is the ancient Egyptian god of embalming, mummification, and the protection of the dead, one of the most visually distinctive and widely recognized figures in Egyptian religion. Depicted with the body of a man and the head of a black jackal, he presides over the physical preparation of the dead for burial, guides souls through the underworld, and stands in attendance at the great Weighing of the Heart ceremony where each soul is judged before Osiris. His Egyptian name was Inpu or Anpu, and his role as divine protector of the dead made him one of the most important deities in funerary religion.

He is a psychopomp in the fullest sense: one who accompanies the dead soul from the moment of death through the transition into the afterlife, combining the roles of guardian, guide, and judge’s assistant. In contemporary practice he is approached with deep respect as one of the most reliable and compassionate divine companions for work with death, dying, and the care of the dead.

History and origins

Anubis is among the oldest deities in the Egyptian pantheon, attested from the Predynastic period before the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. In the Pyramid Texts he appears as the lord of the necropolis and the divine embalmer. In the earliest period he appears to have been the primary god of the dead before Osiris expanded to take that central role; in later tradition he became associated with Osiris as his son (by Osiris and Nephthys in some traditions, or by Ra and Nephthys in others) and as his agent in the underworld.

His color, black rather than the actual color of jackals, reflects the color of fertile Nile mud and of the mummified body, both symbols of death and regenerative transformation in Egyptian symbolism. Black in Egyptian tradition was a color of resurrection and renewal, not of malevolence.

His cult center was at Cynopolis (meaning “city of the dog” in Greek) in Middle Egypt, and he was worshipped throughout Egypt wherever funerary rites were performed. Priests who performed the rites of embalming wore jackal masks in his honor, becoming Anubis for the duration of the sacred work.

In practice

Anubis is one of the Egyptian deities most commonly approached by contemporary practitioners for work related to death and the care of the dead. He is particularly called upon in situations involving a dying person or a recently deceased one, for the settling of unquiet or confused spirits, and for psychopomp work in which a practitioner attempts to guide a soul that seems unable to complete its transition.

He is considered reliably compassionate and professional in his domain, a deity who takes the care of the dead seriously and who works with practitioners who approach him with genuine respect and clear intention. Offerings of anise, black candles, myrrh, dark incense, and images of jackals or the Anubis-head are appropriate. He is addressed with warmth and professional respect: he is doing a sacred job, and practitioners who come to assist that work are welcomed.

Shadow work, the psychological practice of confronting aspects of the self that have been denied or suppressed, is also associated with him in contemporary practice, because confronting death and darkness with honest eyes is part of his mythological character.

Life and work

Anubis’s mythological roles are consistent across thousands of years of Egyptian documentation. He was the patron of the sem-priests who performed the Opening of the Mouth ceremony on mummies and who wore jackal skins in his honor. He was the one who weighed the heart of the deceased against the feather of Ma’at in the Hall of Two Truths. He escorted the justified dead soul into the presence of Osiris.

His association with Isis appears in the myth of Osiris’s death and reassembly, where Anubis is credited with performing the first act of embalming on the body of Osiris. This makes him the divine originator of the embalming art, which the Egyptians understood as a sacred technology for preserving the physical body so that the soul could return to it and eventually achieve resurrection.

The Book of the Dead (more accurately the Book of Coming Forth by Day), the collection of magical texts and spells designed to assist the deceased soul through the underworld, references Anubis repeatedly as a guide and protector. Spells invoking his name were painted on the walls of tombs and written on funerary objects for thousands of years.

Legacy

Anubis remains one of the most immediately recognized and culturally present ancient Egyptian deities in contemporary Western culture. His distinctive iconography has made him a consistent presence in art, fiction, and popular imagination. In contemporary Kemetic practice he is deeply honored as a guardian of the dead and a trustworthy guide for all work at the boundary between life and death. For many practitioners engaging with death and grief, working with Anubis offers a sense of divine accompaniment and the assurance that the passage between worlds has its own sacred order and care.

In myth and popular culture

Anubis’s visual distinctiveness, the jackal-headed figure in gold and black, has made him one of the most consistently recognizable Egyptian deities in Western popular culture. He appears in the Mummy film franchise in various iterations, in the video game Smite as a playable deity, in multiple urban fantasy novel series as a character navigating the modern world, and in countless works of art from museum-adjacent fine art to tattoo design. His recognizability is second only to Ra and Osiris among Egyptian deities in contemporary popular visibility.

Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods (2001) features Anubis and Thoth operating a funeral home in small-town Wisconsin, serving their ancient function in a modern context. Gaiman’s Anubis is dignified, professional, and genuinely compassionate, a rendering that many practitioners find consistent with their devotional experience of the deity. This portrayal brought Anubis to a wide literary audience.

The Weighing of the Heart scene from the Book of the Dead has become one of the most reproduced images from ancient Egypt, appearing in museum exhibitions worldwide and generating extensive popular commentary on Egyptian conceptions of justice and the afterlife. Anubis conducting the scales in this scene is the central visual reference for most popular understanding of Egyptian beliefs about death.

In contemporary Kemetic religious practice, Anubis is among the most frequently chosen patron deities, particularly among practitioners who work with grief, death care, and the psychopomp function.

Myths and facts

Several misconceptions about Anubis circulate widely in popular and occult contexts.

• Anubis is commonly described as the god of death. His domain is the preparation and protection of the dead and the guidance of souls through the underworld, not death itself; Osiris holds the central role as ruler of the dead, while Anubis serves as the divine embalmer, guide, and assistant in judgment.
• The black coloration of Anubis in Egyptian art is frequently interpreted as a sign of death or evil. In Egyptian symbolic tradition, black represented the fertile Nile mud and was a color of regeneration and resurrection rather than malevolence; Anubis’s black skin reflects the transformative and regenerative qualities of the mummification process.
• Anubis is sometimes described as the son of Osiris and Isis. In the most common mythological tradition, his mother is Nephthys (Osiris’s sister), who conceived Anubis through a secret union with Osiris; in other traditions his father is given as Ra rather than Osiris.
• The idea that Anubis is exclusively a funerary deity with no relevance to the living is a misreading of his function. He was the protector of the embalming process and of tombs, but he was also invoked by the living for protection, guidance in difficult passages, and shadow work involving honesty about mortality and loss.
• Anubis and the Greek god Hermes are sometimes treated as essentially identical through the later syncretic deity Hermanubis. They share the psychopomp function but are distinct divine figures with different characters, mythologies, and ritual traditions; Hermanubis was a specific Hellenistic synthesis rather than evidence that the two deities were always understood as the same being.