Anubis
The black jackal of the cemetery, who does the embalming and guards the burial.
- Also written
- Inpu · Anpu · Imy-ut · إنبو · أنبو
Who they were
Anubis is the god of embalming and of the cemetery itself, and he held that place long before Osiris did. The animal is a dog or jackal of the kind that really did live on the desert edge above the tombs, and the Egyptians turned the danger into a guardian. In the mythology he is the one who wraps Osiris and so invents mummification; in practice he is the god the embalmers worked as, and a priest wearing a jackal mask stood in for him at the funeral. He also operates the scales when the heart is weighed.
Where you meet them
He has his own chapel at the north end of the middle terrace at Deir el-Bahari, with its columns and its painted ceiling. He is among the first figures on the walls of most Theban tombs, at the point where the dead person is received, and he attends the mummy in the burial chambers of the Valley of the Queens and the workmen’s tombs.
Who they are shown with
Osiris
Osiris often appears wrapped as a mummy, holding a crook and flail. His atef crown has a tall central element flanked by feathers. The djed is a pillar-shaped symbol with stacked crossbars, associated with stability. Use these clues together with the inscription.
Isis
The reliable sign is a small stepped throne worn on her head — a seat drawn in profile, which is literally how her name is written. From the New Kingdom on she also wears cow’s horns with a sun disc between them, and that is exactly Hathor’s crown, so the two become genuinely hard to separate: if there is a throne, it is Isis; if there is only horns-and-disc, read the caption or the context, and remember that in a tomb the two goddesses flanking a coffin are usually Isis and her sister Nephthys. The other giveaway is the pose. In funerary painting Isis very often kneels at one end of a shrine, a coffin or a scene with her arms stretched out and long feathered wings hanging from them, mirrored by Nephthys at the other end.
Horus
A falcon or falcon-headed figure may represent Horus, but several deities use falcon imagery. Crown, accompanying text and the action in the scene provide the more reliable identification.
Sources & further reading3
Source review is incomplete. Consultation dates are shown only for checked references.
Published works and institutional references for further reading.