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Anubis

AlsoAnubis

The Jackal-Headed Underworld God Who Presides Over Embalming and the Weighing of the Heart

Watchers by the Scales · The Underworld & Judgment
EmbalmingThe UnderworldWeighing

Who they are

Anubis is the jackal-headed (or black-dog-headed) god of the underworld, guardian of embalming and burial. Egypt's cemeteries lay mostly at the desert's edge, where jackals often prowled and scavenged the dead — and the Egyptians raised this most unsettling of animals to the god of the tomb, calling on it to guard the dead rather than despoil them, a classic "turning of fear into protection." He is thought to have invented mummification: after Osiris was murdered, it was Anubis who made him the first mummy. In the underworld judgment he leads the dead into the hall, steadies with his own hands the scales that weigh the heart, and ensures the process is just. His black coat is at once the color of the decaying corpse and of the fertile soil of resurrection and eternal life. The priests who made mummies would wear a jackal mask of Anubis while embalming, acting in the god's place.

Primary sourcesThe "Weighing of the Heart" chapter of the Book of the DeadThe Pyramid Texts

Key stories

The First Mummy

After Osiris was dismembered by Set, Isis recovered the remains, and Anubis was charged to reassemble them, wrap them in linen, and embalm them — making the first mummy in the world, so that Osiris could be resurrected as king of the underworld. From then on Anubis was the founder of all embalming. In reality the embalming priests wore a jackal mask while handling the body, playing Anubis performing the work himself — the funeral of a mortal mapped step by step onto that primal rite that raised a god to life.

The Hand That Steadies the Scales

In the "Hall of Two Truths" in the underworld, Anubis takes the hand of the dead and leads them in, placing the heart on one pan of the scales, the feather of Maat on the other. Anubis adjusts and steadies the scales with his own hands, ensuring the weighing is fair and exact; Thoth records at his side, and the beast Ammit waits nearby. He passes no moral verdict, only guarantees the fairness of the procedure — weighing a life's full measure faithfully for the cosmos to see.

Relationships

Mother
🕯️Nephthys
Ally
🌾Osiris　Made the first mummy for him

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The death-god figure in pop cultureThe jackal-headed Anubis is one of the most recognizable Egyptian gods in games and film (The Mummy series, Assassin's Creed: Origins, and others).

Appears in

The Underworld & JudgmentThe Weighing of the Heart
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