The Anubis Debate

Anubis was a very old god of the ancient Egyptians, universally worshipped throughout the land. Typical of the deities from the Egyptian pantheon, Anubis is often pictured with a human body and an animal head—just what species of head is the subject of some debate. That so many of the Egyptian gods have animal heads or other "creature features" does not mean that this culture worshipped rams, ibises, hawks, beetles, hippopotamuses, or the like. Rather, the animal head illustrates "an attribute of the divinity that characterizes its being," or so claims Patrick Houlihan, author of The Animal World of the Pharaohs. Thus, the hawk head of Horus might have represented this majestic bird's grace, far sight, speed, or strength.

Animal-headed gods might at first seem disconcerting to members of a Judeo-Christian culture. Ancient Egyptians, however, would not have understood why we have a problem with the pictures. Barbara Watterson, author of Gods of Ancient Egypt, has this on-target insight: "Seen objectively, the Egyptians' worship of a falcon god, for example, is surely no more strange a manifestation of religious belief than was the image of the Angel Gabriel with his halo and enormous wings."

At an early point in Egyptian history, Anubis ruled the underworld, a powerful position in the pantheon because the Egyptian culture so heavily emphasized death and the afterlife. This position was usurped, however, by Osiris, a god that the ancients found more sympathetic as their judge after death, possibly because Osiris had a man-head like their own. Even after his "demotion," Anubis still held considerable power for the Ancient Egyptians. His divine duties included the following:

• He cared for the bodies of the dead, guiding souls across the stony western desert to the Paradise of Osiris.
• He observed the weighing of the deceased's heart against the feather of Maat [Truth] and reported his findings to the jury of the gods.
• He became the patron of embalmers, for he had made the first mummy by caring for Osiris' body after this god's death.

Many proud basenji owners who are aware of their breed's link to ancient Egypt will argue that basenjis were the inspiration for Anubis. Evidence does exist to support this claim. For one thing, when Anubis appears with the body of a man, Egyptologists cannot with absolute certainty say whether this god is dog-headed or jackal-headed. In From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, Sir E. A. Wallis Budge sums up the problem this way: "On funerary stelae Anubis is depicted as a man-god with the head of what is now generally thought to be a jackal, but in some drawings the head might well be that of a jackal, or wolf, or dog; in the small funerary figures the head often resembles that of a fox."

Anubis can also be pictured as a full animal. Even in this form, scholars cannot agree on what he is. One of the most famous artifacts is the Anubis statue found in King Tutankhamun's tomb. Watterson analyzes the statue like this:

Tutankhamun's Anubis, like so many others, bears many features characteristic of a dog: long muzzle, eyes with round pupils, five-toed forefeet and four-toed hind feet. But the tail, drooping down the side of the shrine, is long and straight; and club-shaped at the tip, more like the brush of a fox than the curved tail of a dog, which is normally carried in an upright position rather than low down like that of a jackal, wolf, or fox. Howard Carter recorded having seen two animals resembling this jackal-like dog, one in 1926, the other in 1928, but neither had the characteristic tail, a fact which led him to suppose that the original Anubis-animal may have been a jackal crossed with a sub-genus of the canine family.

Any other minor differences, like the exceptionally long ears, can be explained as artistic enhancement. Today, for example, female comic book or video game super heroes always have large, unwieldy breasts, but everyone still recognizes these characters as human women.

Modern scholars are not the only ones confused about which animal species was the inspiration for Anubis. The behavior of the ancients seems to indicate that even they weren't sure whether Anubis was a jackal or a dog [or a wolf, or a fox].

For example, Anubis was the totem god for el-Qeis, the 17th Upper Egyptian Nome. [Nomes were geographical divisions similar to states.] Watterson and Budge both note that the ancient Greeks called this nome Cynopolis or "City of the Dogs," not "City of the Jackals."

In addition, during the Roman Period, animal mummies became a religious fad. Egyptians thought that offering a mummy associated with a specific god at that god's temple was a "concrete" prayer. According to The British Museum Book of Ancient Egypt, the mummies left for Anubis were those of dogs, not jackals. [For detailed information on animal embalming, see dog mummies.]

Another problem connected to the debate over whether Anubis has a dog head or a jackal head is that scholars are not certain which Egyptian words mean dog and which ones mean jackal, so even if an ancient text said definitively, "Anubis is a __-headed god," no modern scholar could with certainty translate the word in the blank! [For detailed information on the basenji in Egyptian language, see the hieroglyphics section of this site.]

What satisfaction it would have been for ancient Egyptian basenji owners to have—curled up on the furniture, begging at the table—little Anubises of their own! What satisfaction it would be for modern basenji owners to think that their dogs were once inspiration for an important god in the Egyptian pantheon! Well, lovers of the breed—both ancient and modern—might want their animals to be the inspiration for Anubis, but the evidence really points to the jackal being the species represented by this Egyptian god. Two key pieces of evidence point to this conclusion:

• First, jackals were associated with Anubis' realm, which dealt with death and preparation for the afterlife.
• Second, the vast majority of Anubis depictions in ancient Egyptian art show a jackal tail on the god, not a dog tail.

Every book on ancient Egyptian mythology will make this point: Ancient Egyptians buried their dead at the desert's edge. Jackals roamed the high ground in this area and had a habit of prowling around these cemeteries, scavenging for remains. Apparently, this jackal behavior can be observed even today in modern Egypt. Jackals are, for the Egyptians of all periods, associated with cemeteries and burial, and this fact makes them the best candidate as inspiration for Anubis, the god responsible for dead souls and the burial of human remains.

A few rare artifacts do show Anubis in full animal form without the characteristic bushy jackal tail. See, for example, the stelae of Hermene and of Atilion and his children. It is important to note, however, that these pieces are A) late in Egyptian history and B) atypical depictions of the god. Some of them might even be falsely identified as Anubis, portraying, in fact, a dog and not the god.

The similarities that people see among basenjis, Anubis, and jackals might be the result of basenjis being used as models during the sculpture or painting process. Would an Egyptian artisan have had the luxury of traveling out to the desert to see a jackal first-hand? Or would this artisan have used what was available in the city? A verbal description of the animal and study of his own or a neighbor's dog—maybe even palace pets—might have been all that he needed to portray his subject realistically. Michelangelo used men as models for the depictions of women in the Sistine Chapel paintings because male apprentices were conveniently present in his workshop. Sending an Egyptian artisan out to the desert to find and then study a jackal might have been too inconvenient for ancient Egyptians, especially if similarly shaped animals were lying around close by.