Wepwawet

The Opener of Ways

Domain: Ways, War & Underworld
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Element: Darkness
Relics of Power: War Standard

Speak with Wepwawet

The full Codex

4 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

Wepwawet (Ap-uat in Budge) is an Egyptian god shown as a jackal or wolf, whose name means "Opener of the ways". The texts I could open show him in three roles: guide of the king and of the dead in the afterlife, scout who goes before the god Osiris in the processions at Abydos, and local lord of Asyut (Siut, the Lycopolis of the Greeks), where the princes of the First Intermediate Period were his "superior prophets". The sources are the translations of Breasted (1906) and Budge (1904), read in full for the passages cited; the Egyptian originals and the modern translations of Faulkner and Allen could not be opened, and that limits what is claimed here.

11 min read · Reviewed on October 14, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The wolf, the standard, the mace and the open way

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Budge, E. A. Wallis (trans.), The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. II (Pyramid Texts of Unas and Pepi I; Book of the Dead, chs. 17, 138, 145). translation: Budge, 1904. read
Budge, E. A. Wallis (trans.), The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. I (Pyramid Texts, Book of the Underworld). translation: Budge, 1904. read
Breasted, James Henry (trans.), Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. I: The First to the Seventeenth Dynasties. translation: Breasted, University of Chicago Press, 1906. read
Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride (Moralia V). translation: Loeb Classical Library, vol. V, 1936 (text by Penelope). read
Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica, book 1. translation: Loeb Classical Library, vol. I, 1933 (text by Penelope, Univ. of Chicago). read

Studies

Budge, E. A. Wallis, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. II, ch. on Anubis and section "Jackal and Ass" (Budge's commentary on the sources, not an ancient text). 1904. open

Name and epithets

The spelling varies with the scholar. Breasted, in Ancient Records of Egypt, writes Upwawet and transcribes the Egyptian as Wp-wꜢwt; Budge, in The Gods of the Egyptians, writes Ap-uat or Apuat; the current form is Wepwa…

In the ancient sources

Pyramid Texts (Unas and Pepi I), in Budge's translation, 5th and 6th Dynasties (Old Kingdom). Budge cites three uses: the king "entereth into heaven like Ap-uat" (II, p.

The myths

The scout of the barque of Osiris at Abydos. The richest source for understanding the god as a figure of action is the group of inscriptions that describes the festival of Osiris at Abydos.

Worship and archaeology

The best-documented cult in the sources I opened is that of Siut (Asyut), a city of Upper Egypt. The three princes of the 9th and 10th Dynasties bear the title "superior prophet of Upwawet, lord of Siut" (Breasted § 391…

How the god was depicted

Budge describes Ap-uat as a god in the form of a jackal or of a jackal-headed man, and distinguishes him from Anubis by the content of the texts, not by the image.

What scholars debate

Wepwawet and Anubis: two gods or one. Budge says that formerly they were thought to be two names of one god, "but there is no longer any reason for this view" (II, p.

After antiquity

The open authors treat Wepwawet as a god of place and of function. Budge himself calls him a companion of Anubis (II, p.

Did you know?

One of the inscriptions of Siut tells that Prince Kheti I, commissioned by the king, was to restore the temple of Upwawet on "venerable" ground that Ptah had built with his fingers and Thoth had founded.

Codex relic

War Standard. The standard carried ahead of the pharaoh and of souls, opening the way in war and in the beyond.

The rest of this scroll is sealed

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