Knowledge about how mother nature works has been a challenge for humanity since its inception. Today we understand a little more about how certain phenomena such as thunder or other more mysterious ones such as the optical phenomena of halos in the sky are gestated. However, ancient cultures did not have an explanation for it, which is why their reading of reality gradually formed a worldview full of gods that gave meaning to the phenomena around them. One of the most complex that a great pantheon of gods has bequeathed to us, as well as a vision that borders on mystery, that is the Egyptian one and one of their main gods, Anubis, helped them understand death and how man can face it .
What animal does Anubis represent?
According to historical descriptions, Anubis was represented by an animal described as a black jackal lying on its belly. Although they have also found representations of a person with the head of a jackal accompanied by a staff, a gold scale or a cross.
It should be said that jackals are canid mammals very similar to wolves, although smaller and with reddish-brown or yellowish-gray fur (whitish on the underparts). They feed on carrion and small animals, and live in the temperate regions of Asia, Africa and southeastern Europe forming large herds.
Where does the name Anubis come from?
Currently he is known as Anubis, however, this is only the Greek deformation of his real name Inpu in Egyptian or Anoub in Coptic. Its origin, however, is still surrounded by shadows and it is not clear why it was named in this way, although one of the explanations is that it is an onomatopoeia of the howl emitted by jackals. Some of the hieroglyphic translations suggest that Anubis had various epithets referring to him such as ‘Lord of the Necropolis’, ‘Lord of the Holy Land’, ‘He Who Stands on His Mountain’, ‘Lord of the Embalmers’, among some others.
Apparently Anubis was of great importance to Ancient Egypt, since among his many tasks was to mummify the dead. And it is that in the religion of the Egyptian culture, mummification was not understood only as a technique to preserve corpses, but as a religious ritual where death was treated as a curable disease.
Through the priests, who had to use an Anubis mask to represent him, they carried out this task where the god had the power to make the hearts of the dead beat again in the afterlife. That is to say, he was in charge of the underworld together with his father Osiris and it is for this reason that he is also associated as the quintessential protector of tombs and for which most of the ancient tombs had carvings on them. Anubis.
After raising the dead in the underworld, the Egyptians believed that this god led the dead to the court of Osiris, where the ‘psychostasis’ or the ‘weighing of the soul’ took place where Anubis placed on one of the plates of its golden scale a feather of the goddess Maat and on the other side, the heart of the deceased, source of consciousness and the sins committed in his life. If the balance leaned towards the feather of Maat, it meant that Osiris would accept the entry of the soul into the underworld, otherwise, it would be eaten by Ammit, a half-hippopotamus, half-crocodile monster that ended his existence forever.
What does the Anubis symbol mean?
The cross is an Egyptian symbol that on many occasions accompanied Anubis in his representations. This corresponds to a hieroglyph whose name is ‘anj’ which means life or eternal life and was drawn by the Egyptians as a cross that has an oval or loop at the top. Anubis is not the only god who is seen carrying the cross, many others like Horus also carry it in one of their hands on some occasions.
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