Anubis

The Guardian of the Scales

Domain: Death & Judgment
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Element: Darkness
Relics of Power: Dark Gold Ankh

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The full Codex

5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Ancient Egyptians

Region

Nile Valley, Egypt

Period

c. 3100 BC – 400 AD

The Egyptian gods were worshipped for over three millennia along the banks of the Nile, with monumental temples at Karnak, Luxor, and Heliopolis. The pharaohs were held to be divine, and life revolved around cosmic order (Maat) and preparation for the afterlife. The cult endured until the rise of Christianity in Roman Egypt.

At the Opet festival, Amun's sacred barque sailed from Karnak to Luxor amid celebrating crowds. In the temples, priests woke, dressed, and fed the god's statue every day, and the Beautiful Festival of the Valley carried the deities to visit the shore of the dead.

At a glance

Anubis is an Egyptian funerary deity. Utterance 81 of the Pyramid Texts calls him First of the Westerners, while Utterance 213 compares the face of the deceased with his. In the weighing scene of the Papyrus of Ani, he attends the scales while Thoth records the judgement. Plutarch preserves another aspect of his tradition: born to Osiris and Nephthys and raised by Isis, he becomes her guardian. These witnesses belong to different contexts and do not establish a single biography. Descent from Ra or Hesat and the chronology of an alleged transfer of sovereignty to Osiris are not demonstrated by the passages checked for this entry.

15 min read · Reviewed on October 8, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

Jackal, scales of judgment, ankh and the black color of rebirth

Family

Parents

OsirisNephthys (late tradition / Plutarch)

Anubis

Genealogy according to Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 14 (Babbitt, 1936): Osiris and Nephthys; Isis raises the child. Other genealogies are discussed as variants in the text.

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride (ch. 14, 44). translation: Frank Cole Babbitt, Plutarch's Moralia, Volume V, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1936. read
Anonymous, The Pyramid Texts: Utterances 57 §40b; 81 §§56a–57e; 133 §§83a–b. translation: Samuel A. B. Mercer (1952). read
Anonymous, The Pyramid Texts: Utterances 213 §§134a–135c; 214 §§136a–139d; 217 §§157b–d. translation: Samuel A. B. Mercer (1952). read
Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI.9–14 / The Golden Ass. read
Herodotus, Histories II.66–67. translation: G. C. Macaulay. read
Strabo, Geography 17.1.40. translation: H. L. Jones, Loeb Classical Library. read

Studies

Musée du Louvre, Papyrus Jumilhac, E 17110: Description, Inscriptions, Places and dates. open
British Museum, Papyrus from the Book of the Dead of Ani: descripción en Google Arts & Culture. open
Paul T. Nicholson, Salima Ikram, Steve Mills, The Catacombs of Anubis at North Saqqara: an archaeological perspective. Antiquity 89 (2015), 2015. open
Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan, Death Dogs: The Jackal Gods of Ancient Egypt. open
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Anubis, object 04.2.427. open

Name and epithets

Anubis is the name used in English for the deity whose Egyptian name is represented here as Jnpw, with the conventional vocalizations Inpu and Anpu.

In the ancient sources

Pyramid Texts, Old Kingdom (c. 2400–2200 BCE).. Mercer, Pyramid Texts, Utterance 81 §57d and 213 §135b: the title and facial comparison were previously checked.

The myths

A birth tradition in Plutarch. In chapter 14, Plutarch resumes the death of Osiris related in the preceding chapter.

Worship and archaeology

The canine catacomb at Saqqara belongs to a wider phenomenon of votive animal offerings. Nicholson, Ikram, and Mills distinguish sacred animals kept in temple precincts from the many animals mummified by pilgrims as tha…

How the god was depicted

Funerary iconography represents Anubis as a recumbent canid, a complete animal, or a human figure with a canine head.

What scholars debate

Animal cult: votive offering, not a sacred zoo. Saqqara catacombs contain large deposits of mummified animals. The Cardiff archaeological article explains that many mummies were votive offerings from pilgrims and that d…

After antiquity

Anubis’s movement beyond Egypt is documented in Hellenistic and Roman contexts. The Kelsey Museum exhibition records votive inscriptions to the god at the temple of Isis on Delos, from the second–first centuries BCE, an…

Did you know?

A dog-shaped votive mummy at the Kelsey Museum (KM 88821) contained human skeletal remains, according to the museum’s account of its X-ray examination.

Codex relic

Dark Gold Ankh. The key of eternal life and judgment, used to weigh the hearts of mortal souls.

The rest of this scroll is sealed

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