![Anubis weighing the soul of the scribe Ani, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, &circa; 1275 &BCE;. [Credit: © The British Museum/Heritage-Images]](http://images.bookrags.com/images/eb/83825.gif)
Anubis weighing the soul of the scribe Ani, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, &circa; 1275 &BCE;.
[Credit: © The British Museum/Heritage-Images]
Ancient Egyptian god of the dead, represented by a jackal or the figure of a man with the head of a jackal. In the Early Dynastic period and the Old Kingdom, he enjoyed a preeminent (though not exclusive) position as lord of the dead, but he was later overshadowed by
Osiris. His role is reflected in such epithets as “He Who Is upon His Mountain” (i.e., the
necropolis), “Lord of the Sacred Land,” “Foremost of the Westerners,” and “He Who Is in the Place of Embalming.”
His particular concern was with the funerary cult and the care of the dead; hence, he was reputed to be the inventor of embalming, an art he first employed on the corpse of Osiris. In his later role as the “conductor of souls,” he was sometimes identified by the Greco-Roman world with the Greek Hermes in the composite deity Hermanubis.
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