The Bizarre Story of the Ancient Egyptian God of Death and Afterlife
Anubis was a jackal-headed God of the dead and embalming in Ancient Egypt.
A leopard moves stealthily towards the body of Osiris. Before it can attack, Anubis senses that the animal is in fact Set, the evil god. He captures the leopard, branding it with scalding iron. Anubis thus is the reason that leopards have spots. At least, this is what ancient Egyptians believed.
Unlike the (relatively) famous god Osiris and his myth , any mention of Anubis leads to more questions than answers. Especially because who he was can’t be described in a single line because of his importance to ancient Egypt.
A God With Different Forms
Jackals were notorious in Egypt as far back as 6000 BCE (that’s over 8000 years). To satisfy their hunger, they would dig bodies from graves and tear their flesh. Ancient Egyptians needed protection against these scavengers. The best way to do that was a God who was portrayed as a jackal himself. He became the fearsome canine god that jackals wouldn’t go against, protecting the dead.
Somewhere down the line, inscriptions on tombs suggest that Anubis transformed from a jackal or a jackal-dog to a jackal-headed dark-skinned man. The constant in the…
