Anpu

Anpu, known to the Greeks as Anubis, is an ancient Egyptian deity associated with mummification and the afterlife. In Egyptian sources his name is often rendered in hieroglyphs as Inpw, and he is commonly depicted as a jackal-headed man or, less often, as a jackal. The jackal symbol reflects his role in cemeteries and his function as a guardian of graves and funerary rites.

Anpu's roles include supervising embalming and the preparation of the deceased for the afterlife. He is closely linked to the process of mummification, guarding tombs and assisting with the transition of the dead. In many versions of the afterlife belief, he appears in the judgment scene in which the heart of the deceased is weighed against the feather of Ma'at; Anpu, together with Thoth, oversees this weighing to determine the worthiness of the soul. He is also depicted as guiding souls to their final destination in the afterlife, acting as a protector and guide for the dead.

Relationships and origins in myth vary. Some texts present Anpu as a son of Osiris and Nephthys, while others place him in different genealogies or associate him more broadly with the Osirian cult. Over time, Anpu remained a prominent funerary figure in tomb inscriptions and temple reliefs, and his iconography persisted in popular and priestly depictions of the afterlife.

In later periods, Egyptian religious practice blended with Hellenistic and Roman beliefs, and Anubis was sometimes likened to psychopomp figures in other cultures. The deity’s enduring image—jackal-headed guardian of the dead—remained a central element of ancient Egyptian conceptions of mortality and remembrance.