Anubis: Guardian of the Dead, Hound of the Divine

Amongst Egypt’s most enduring gods stands Anubis, the jackal-headed guardian of tombs and guide of souls. His origins reach deep into Egypt’s early history; before Osiris rose as lord of the afterlife, it was Anubis who presided over the dead, wrapping them in sacred linen and weighing their hearts against the feather of Ma’at. He is the keeper of cemeteries, the one who watches by moonlight where jackals once prowled the desert’s edge.

The First Footprints of Anubis (From Desert Scavenger to Divine Embalmer)

Long before Anubis was called by name, the Egyptians watched the jackals that lingered on the desert’s edge, where the dead were laid to rest. In the shadows of Abydos, standards bearing the form of a jackal or wolf appear as early as the dawn of kingship (c. 3100 B.C.). Egyptologists often whisper a note of caution here; these early guardians may have been Wepwawet, the “Opener of the Ways,” a kindred canid god. Yet they remind us that from Egypt’s very first centuries, a jackal-shaped protector kept watch over king and tomb alike.

It is in the Old Kingdom that Anubis himself first steps clearly into view. In the Pyramid Texts of King Unas (5th Dynasty, c. 2400 B.C.), we hear his name. The monarch’s face is said to be that of Anubis, and he is “decked like Anubis … who rules over the Western Mountain.” Here, the jackal god is not a prowler but a priestly figure: jmy-wt, “He who is in the place of embalming,” and “He who is upon his mountain,” sentinel of the necropolis ridge.

At this time, Anubis was chief amongst the gods of the dead. Only later, as Osiris rose to prominence in the Middle Kingdom, did Anubis assume his enduring role as embalmer-in-chief and faithful psychopomp; no less vital, but with his duties refined.

By the Middle Kingdom (c. 2000 B.C.), his form is fixed in miniature and precious metal: delicate electrum amulets of a recumbent jackal upon a shrine, the archetypal “Anubis on his chapel.” These talismans, tucked into tombs at Abydos and beyond, offered the reassurance that the divine embalmer kept watch. Today they gleam in museum cases, labelled firmly as Anubis, though sometimes with a knowing nod to his older cousin Wepwawet, who once shared his desert road.

In Egyptian art, Anubis is a vision of midnight grace as the sleek black jackal poised upon his chapel, ears alert, body taut, eyes ever watchful. At times, he is shown as a man with the head of a jackal, striding like a priest in service of the dead; at others, as the animal entire, stretched in calm but eternal vigilance. The colour of his hide is not the tawny red of the desert hound, but a lustrous, unearthly black; the hue of fertile Nile silt and of the embalmed flesh he guarded. This was no ordinary jackal, but a divine form distilled into an icon.

Artists chiselled him into tomb walls, painted him on papyri, and cast him in gold, faience, and electrum. Always the profile is unmistakable; long, narrow snout; sharply pricked ears; a body lean and elongated, suited to the endless watch of the necropolis. From the Old Kingdom reliefs to the Middle Kingdom amulets, his form changes little, as if the Egyptians knew perfection when they found it.

Behind the artistic consistency of Anubis lies a question that continues to enchant Egyptologists; upon which living creature was this god most truly based? Was he the jackal that prowled the graveyards, the newly recognised African golden wolf (kin to the jackal yet closer to the grey wolf) or perhaps the echo of a desert hound, lithe and elegant, still racing across the sands in our imagination?

The Egyptians themselves were less troubled by zoological precision than by sacred symbolism; for them, a divine jackal was a jackal, whether real or not. Yet for us, gazing back across four thousand years, it is irresistible to wonder what flesh-and-blood beast lay behind those chiselled ears and slender muzzle. For centuries, scholars assumed the model was the Egyptian jackal, only to have modern science reveal a wolf instead. Others turn to depictions of the tesem and other ancient hunting hounds; sleek, fine-limbed creatures whose upright ears and taut frames mirror the very silhouette of Anubis.

And then, of course, there is the Pharaoh Hound. Though its lineage leads not to the Nile but to Malta, its noble stance, amber eyes, and radiant form so closely echo the god’s image that it has captured the popular imagination as Anubis’ living descendant. To see one rear upon its hind legs is to glimpse the very outline chiselled into tomb walls and painted upon papyri.

No single answer satisfies the scholar, and perhaps that is as it should be. For Anubis was not bound to one beast alone, but distilled from the essence of all the desert’s canids: jackal, wolf, and hound alike. His form is at once everywhere and nowhere, mortal and divine, a god shaped from the shadows of the wild.

The question of Anubis’ form, so often likened to the noble Pharaoh Hound of Malta, hints at a larger truth; this was a god who did not remain bound within Egypt’s deserts. Like the sailors and traders of the ancient world, Anubis too seemed to cross the Mediterranean. By the time of the Romans, he was no stranger abroad. We find him clad in a soldier’s tunic, rendered in statues not with the lithe body of a jackal alone, but with the martial trappings of an empire that had embraced him.

Such images remind us that Anubis was never a parochial deity. His role as guide of souls, guardian of the dead, and keeper of sacred rites was easily understood beyond the Nile. In a world of mingled gods and shifting pantheons, he travelled well; his black muzzle and upright ears recognisable whether on Egyptian papyrus, in a Maltese echo, or in Roman stone.

Thus, many dogs, both domesticated and wild have become more than a modern mirror of Anubis, they each symbolises how the god himself leapt across seas and cultures, his image adapted yet enduring, forever straddling the line between the mortal beast and the divine protector.