With the head of a black jackal and the body of a man, Anubis is one of the most recognizable gods of ancient Egypt — and one of the most misunderstood. He wasn’t a god of death in the frightening sense. He was its guardian: the one who protected the dead and guided them safely into the next life.
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Why a jackal?
Jackals and wild dogs prowled the edges of the desert, where Egyptians buried their dead. A god in the form of a jackal turned that threat into a protector: the creature that haunted cemeteries became the one who guarded them.
His black color isn’t about darkness or evil, either. Black was the color of the fertile Nile mud — the color of new life and rebirth.
The god of mummification
Anubis was the patron of embalmers. In myth, he prepared the body of Osiris, the murdered king, making him the first mummy. Priests who performed embalming sometimes wore jackal masks while they worked, taking on Anubis’s role.
The weighing of the heart
Anubis’s most famous scene comes from the Book of the Dead. After death, the heart of the deceased was placed on a scale against the feather of Ma’at, the goddess of truth and balance. Anubis oversaw the weighing while Thoth recorded the result.
A heart lighter than the feather meant a life lived in balance — and the way into the afterlife.
If the heart was heavy with wrongdoing, it was devoured by Ammit, a creature part crocodile, part lion and part hippopotamus. Anubis stood between the dead and that fate, making sure the judgment was fair.
His titles
- “He who is upon his mountain” — watching over the cemetery from the cliffs above it.
- “Lord of the sacred land” — the sacred land being the necropolis, the city of the dead.
- “He who is in the place of embalming” — his role as divine embalmer.
Anubis today
Anubis has become a symbol of protection, loyalty and guidance through change — which is why he shows up on everything from tattoos to hoodies. He’s a guardian for anyone going through a transition.
Original Anubis artwork, drawn in Cairo — hoodies, stickers and more.
