Who is Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead?

Anubis (Egyptian Inpu, also written Anpu) was the jackal god of embalming and the guardian of the dead in ancient Egypt. He watched over cemeteries, prepared the body for its life after death, and led the dead to the judgment, where he is often shown checking the scales as the heart is weighed. He appears as a black jackal lying down, or as a man with a jackal’s head.

Who he was in Egypt: Before Osiris rose to become the great lord of the dead, Anubis was the chief god of the dead, and afterwards he kept his place at Osiris’s side. In the Osiris story he embalms the murdered god, which made him the patron of embalmers. His titles include “he who is upon his mountain” and “lord of the sacred land”, meaning the cemetery. His main cult city was the one the Greeks called Cynopolis, “dog city”.
His signs and animals: His animal is the jackal, or a wild dog of the desert edge, where the cemeteries lay. He is painted black, which is not a jackal’s colour: black stood for the rich soil of the Nile, for new life, and for the darkened body after embalming. In hieroglyphs a jackal lying down follows his name. Greeks in Egypt later joined him with their own guide of souls, Hermes, as Hermanubis.
How Gerald Massey read him in 1907: Massey spells the name Anup. He reads him as the embalmer, the guide through Amenta, his name for the world of the dead, and the first judge of the dead, later replaced by Atum and Osiris. In his larger scheme Anup began as a power in the stars, the god of the pole star and chief of the seven stars that never set, until the sun gods took his place. Massey also treats Anup as a form of Set, and pairs him with John the Baptist as the one who prepares the way.
What scholars say now: The roles of embalmer, guardian of cemeteries and guide to the judgment are well attested, and so is his place as chief god of the dead before Osiris, which Massey also saw. Anubis as a pole-star god belongs to Massey’s own scheme, an age of star gods before the age of the sun, which Egyptologists do not accept. Anubis and Set are separate gods, and biblical scholars do not accept that John the Baptist was modelled on Anubis.
Where you meet him today: A black jackal lying on a gilded shrine guarded the treasury of Tutankhamun’s tomb. In the Book of the Dead of Hunefer, in the British Museum, Anubis leads the dead man by the hand to the scales and then checks the balance.
In Massey’s words: “Anup is the guide of ways in the wilderness of the under-world; he makes straight the path for the future life” (Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (1907), Book XII, p. 856)
In the app: Trainer › Symbol Trainer › Jackal. In the app, the Symbol Trainer explains his jackal and how Massey read it, and the Word Trainer sets Massey’s Anup beside Anubis.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

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