Underworld
Anubis
jnpwHow it changed
Was the principal god of the dead before Osiris. Rather than being displaced he was subordinated, becoming the embalmer and the guide who conducts the weighing of the heart, which is why he is everywhere in funerary art but rarely the recipient of the prayer.
Cult centre
Cynopolis
Best attested
Old Kingdom onward
Family
Variously the son of Ra, of Osiris and Nephthys, or of Set.
Epithets
- “He who is upon his mountain”
- “Lord of the sacred land”
How to recognise the figure
A black jackal, or jackal-headed man. The black is the colour of fertile silt and regeneration, not of death.
Appears in
Alluded to from c. 2400 BCE; told as a connected narrative only c. 100 CE
The murder of Osiris
The one Egyptian myth everyone can name, and the one where the famous version is Greek.
c. 1550 BCE onward, Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead
The weighing of the heart
A heart on one pan, a feather on the other, and forty-two judges who each have to be addressed by name.
c. 1200 BCE, Nineteenth Dynasty
The Tale of Two Brothers
A folk tale, not a myth, and the oldest surviving story of a wife falsely accusing a man who refused her.
Worshipped at
Others in this group