Anpu Anubis: jackal or wolf? The god's true animal
of reading - words
On the walls of Egyptian tombs, he always appears the same way: a black canid lying on his funerary chest, or a man with a canid's head bending over a mummy. Anpu Anubis is not a double god, he is a single deity carrying two names, the Egyptian one and the Greek one. Yet for two centuries one question has resisted every Egyptologist: which animal, exactly? The answer shifted in 2015, and it did not come from Egyptology.
Key takeaways
- Anpu is the Egyptian name, Anubis its Greek transcription: one and the same deity.
- God of funerary rites, of mummification and of the passage to the afterlife, worshipped for nearly 3,500 years.
- Shown as a black canid lying down, or as a man with a canid's head, with a coat whose black has nothing natural about it.
- The exact species is still debated: the strongest candidate today is a wolf, not a jackal.
- A second canid god, Wepwawet, ruled over the city the Greeks called Lycopolis, literally the city of the wolf.
Anpu or Anubis, what is the Egyptian god's real name?
Anpu and Anubis refer to exactly the same deity: the first is the Egyptian name, the second its Greek transcription.
The name attested in Egyptian texts is Inpu, transliterated as Anpu, Anpou or Inpu depending on the school. Anubis comes from the Greek Anoubis, the form adopted by Hellenic travellers and scholars, then passed unchanged into Latin and later into modern languages. So when you read Anpu Anubis, you are reading the Egyptian name followed by its Greek translation, nothing more.
His cult is one of the oldest in the pantheon. The earliest archaeological evidence goes back to the First Dynasty, around 3200 to 3000 BCE. The full phonetic spelling of the name appears much later, around the Sixth Dynasty, roughly 2200 BCE. Between those two dates the god already existed, his name was simply written differently.
The etymology, for its part, remains obscure. Three hypotheses hold up:
- The Jumilhac Papyrus breaks the name into three hieroglyphs, the reed for wind, the ripple for water, the mat for the desert: the god would be named after the elements of his territory.
- Egyptologist Terence DuQuesne proposed in 2005 a far more direct reading: Inpu would be an onomatopoeia imitating the canid's howl. The god would carry the cry of his animal as a name.
- A derivation from the Egyptian words for puppy or dog, the most prosaic and the oldest hypothesis.
None of these leads commands consensus. This blur around the name foreshadows a far deeper blur around the animal itself.
Jackal, dog or wolf, which animal lies behind Anpu Anubis?
The god himself is a composite canid matching no living species, but the real animal that haunted Egypt's necropolises is today classified as a wolf.
This is where the subject becomes fascinating, and this is where almost every account stops halfway.
What Egyptologists say
The observation most often repeated in the scientific literature is a disconcerting one: the combination of morphological features in the Anubis canid matches no known living species. The muzzle is broad and could belong to a dozen different canids. The ears, tall and pointed, suggest the fox. The lean body recalls the greyhound. The tail is close to a jackal's, but noticeably longer. As for the coat, it is a deep black, an uncommon colour among wild canids.
George Hart, of the British Museum, sums up the discipline's cautious position: the jackal is "probably" the prototype, or more precisely the quintessence of desert dogs. In other words, the Egyptians did not copy a species, they distilled an idea.
The black itself owes nothing to zoology. It is a symbolic colour: that of the fertile silt left by the Nile flood, and therefore the colour of regeneration and rebirth. A black funerary god is not a dark god, he is a god of life returning.
The zoological turnaround of 2015
Here is the piece of information that popular accounts of this subject still almost entirely overlook.
The golden canid of North Africa, the one that genuinely prowled around Egypt's necropolises and that everyone still calls a "jackal", was long classified as a mere subspecies of the Eurasian golden jackal, under the name Canis aureus lupaster. That synonymy dated back to the catalogue of African mammals published by zoologist Glover Morrill Allen in 1939, and it remained the reference for more than seventy years.
It was wrong. A series of analyses of mitochondrial DNA and of the nuclear genome, begun in 2011 and confirmed in 2015, established that this animal is a species in its own right: Canis lupaster, the African golden wolf. Genetically, it is closer to the grey wolf and the coyote than to the golden jackal it had always been lumped in with.
| Animal | Scientific name | Present in ancient Egypt | Link with the god |
|---|---|---|---|
| African golden wolf | Canis lupaster | Yes, widespread in desert areas | Strongest candidate for the real animal of the necropolises |
| Eurasian golden jackal | Canis aureus | No, separate range | Traditional attribution, now disputed |
| Domestic dog | Canis familiaris | Yes, mummified by the hundreds of thousands | Inspires the cult of Cynopolis, the city of the dog |
| Ruppell's fox | Vulpes rueppellii | Yes, in the desert | Most likely supplies the shape of the ears |
| Egyptian sighthound | Type tesem | Yes, hunting dog of the elites | Most likely supplies the lean body |
The honest conclusion
Beware of overreading, it circulates widely. This discovery does not prove that the god Anubis "is" a wolf. From an Egyptologist's point of view, the divine canid remains a composite creature tied to no precise species.
What it does establish is subtler and, frankly, more interesting: the golden canid that really haunted the cemeteries of the Egyptian desert was, in modern taxonomic terms, a wolf. The Egyptians who watched those silhouettes prowl between the tombs at dusk were looking at a wolf. They simply gave it another name.
If this figure of the watchful canid speaks to you, our wolf figurines carry the same guardian silhouette, in a Nordic register this time.
Wepwawet, the wolf god of Lycopolis, Egypt's other sacred canid
Egypt worshipped a second canid god, Wepwawet, whose cult city the Greeks named Lycopolis, literally the city of the wolf.
Egypt did not have one canid god. It had two, and the second is almost always forgotten.
Wepwawet, also transcribed Upuaut, carries a name that translates literally as "the opener of the ways". This is no vague metaphor: it is a precise function, and it is military as much as funerary.
His remit covers three domains:
- Divine scout: he goes ahead of royal processions and opens the way for military campaigns, his standard carried at the head of the column.
- Guide of the ascent: he opens for the deceased the road leading from the tomb to the sky.
- Protector of kingship: he presides over the Sed festival, the royal jubilee that symbolically regenerates the pharaoh's power.
His cult city is Asyut, in Middle Egypt. And this is where it all comes together for anyone drawn to the wolf: on arriving, the Greeks named that city Lycopolis, from the Greek lykos, wolf. The city of the wolf. They did not pick the name at random, they named the town after the animal of the god worshipped there. More than 600 votive stelae dating from the New Kingdom have been unearthed on the site.
Iconographically, the two gods are told apart at a glance. Wepwawet is shown standing, upright on his standard, in a posture of walking and opening. Anubis is shown lying down, a canid sphinx watching over his chest. One advances, the other guards.
Over time they ended up merging into one another, to the point where some late traditions make Wepwawet a son of Anubis. Anubis, for his part, ruled over Cynopolis (Hardai in Egyptian), the city of the dog, capital of the seventeenth nome of Upper Egypt.
Two neighbouring canid cities on the same river, then. One dedicated to the dog, the other to the wolf. The wolf had its own religious capital in Egypt, and hardly anyone tells that story.
The five epithets of Anubis and what they reveal about his powers
His five main epithets cast him in turn as chief of the dead, lord of the necropolises, sentinel of the cliff, officiant of the ritual and chief of the embalmers.
The Egyptians did not define their gods with identity records, but with epithets, titles attached to the name that state the function. Those of Anubis draw a very precise portrait of his territory.
| Egyptian epithet | Translation | What it tells us |
|---|---|---|
| Khenty imentyou | Foremost of the Westerners | The Westerners are the dead: the west is the land of the setting sun, and therefore of death. Anubis presides over the people of the departed |
| Neb ta djeser | Lord of the sacred land | The sacred land is the necropolis itself. He is the territorial master of the cemeteries |
| Tepy djouef | He who is upon his mountain | The cliff overlooking the valley, where the tombs are cut. He watches from above, like a sentinel |
| Khenty seh netjer | He who presides over the divine booth | The divine booth is the ritual tent where the body is prepared. He directs the funerary liturgy |
| Imy-out | He who presides over the embalming chamber | The most technical title: he is chief of the embalmers, patron of the concrete work of mummification |
His genealogy, by contrast, is anything but stable. Depending on the tradition and the period, his father is Osiris, or Ra, or even Set. His mother is Nephthys, or Isis, or the cow Hesat, or Bastet. For the Egyptians this instability was no contradiction: a god as ancient as Anubis crossed too many centuries and too many local cults to have only one family.
Two figures remain constant around him: his consort Anupet (also written Anput), the feminine form of his own name, and his daughter Kebechet, goddess of the lustral water that refreshes and purifies the dead.
The weighing of the heart, when Anubis guards the threshold of the afterlife
Anubis embalms, reawakens the senses of the deceased, leads him through the underworld and guarantees the fairness of the weighing of the heart, but he never judges.
Anubis's role is not limited to watching over tombs. He accompanies the dead at every stage of the passage, in a strictly codified ritual order:
- Embalming: under his patronage, the embalmers remove the viscera, dry the body with natron and wrap it in linen bandages. The officiating priest wears a canid mask, becoming Anubis for the duration of the rite.
- The opening of the mouth: a ceremony performed on the upright mummy, restoring to the deceased the use of his senses, his speech and his ability to feed himself in the afterlife.
- The guiding of the soul: Anubis takes the dead by the hand and leads him through the Duat, the underworld, to the hall of judgement.
- Psychostasia: the weighing of the heart before the tribunal of Osiris.
That last scene is one of the most widely reproduced images in all of ancient Egypt. On one pan of the scales, the heart of the deceased, seat of conscience and of the memory of his deeds. On the other, the feather of Maat, symbol of truth and of right order. Thoth, the ibis god of scribes, records the verdict. And beneath the scales waits Ammit, the devourer with the composite body, ready to swallow a heart made too heavy by wrongdoing, which means the second death, definitive annihilation.
Anubis's exact role in this scene deserves a clarification that many summaries skip over: he is not the judge. The judge is Osiris. Anubis is the one who adjusts the beam of the scales and guarantees the fairness of the weighing. He is the arbiter of the passage, the technical guarantor of the threshold.
That is precisely the definition of a psychopomp: not a god who condemns, but a god who leads. And Egypt is far from holding a monopoly on that function.
From Egypt's golden wolf to Fenrir, the guardian canid across mythologies
The canid guarding the threshold of the dead is not an Egyptian invention: the archetype turns up in Scandinavia with Garm and Fenrir, and in Greece with Cerberus.
Set the mythologies side by side and one pattern leaps out: everywhere, it is a canid that guards the door of the dead.
- In Egypt, Anubis leads souls into the Duat, and Wepwawet opens the way before them.
- In the Norse corpus, Garm is the chained wolf-hound before the cave of Gnipahellir, guarding the entrance to Hel's realm and howling at Ragnarok.
- Still in the north, Fenrir, the cosmic wolf, is bound by the gods precisely because he embodies the limit that nothing must cross before its hour.
- In Greece, Cerberus watches over the Styx, a three-headed dog that lets you in and never out.
This is no coincidence of bestiaries. The canid holds a unique place in human experience: it is the animal of the edge. It prowls the border between camp and desert, village and forest, firelight and darkness. It is close enough to us to feel familiar, wild enough to stay unsettling. No other animal holds that in-between position so well.
A people trying to picture the border between the living and the dead naturally reaches for the animal that already lives on every other border. Wolf and jackal do not guard the threshold because they are frightening. They guard it because they are already creatures of the threshold.
This reading also explains the contemporary fascination with the wolf as a totem animal: what people look for in it is that ability to hold the edge without tipping to either side. To dig into the motif on the Norse side, our article on the Viking gods details the place of Fenrir and of Odin's wolves in the Scandinavian pantheon. And if the symbol already walks with you, our wolf tattoos let you wear it without committing for life.
Wearing the symbol of the guardian canid every day
A canid symbol is worth only the intention you put into it: the piece is chosen afterwards, to match that intention.
A symbol is worth only the intention placed in it. Before choosing a piece, a few concrete markers:
- Define your intention first: protection, guidance, memory of someone you have lost, or simply an affirmed bond with wild nature. The choice of object follows from it, never the other way round.
- Favour a pendant worn close to the heart if the intention is protective. Our wolf pendants follow that logic of a symbol kept against the body.
- Choose a ring instead if the intention is assertion: it is seen, it is shown, it commits. See the wolf rings.
- Check the legibility of the motif at arm's length. A clean profile always ages better than a design crowded with details that blur as soon as you step back.
- Avoid finishes that are too shiny, they break the mineral, nocturnal spirit of the motif. Matte black and aged silver stay faithful to the symbolism of the threshold. The wolf jewellery collection covers both registers.
- Test the motif before committing to a permanent piece: a temporary design worn for a few days will tell you quickly whether it really looks like you.
Anpu Anubis FAQ, 6 common questions
The six questions below cover what people most often ask about Anpu Anubis, his family, his powers and the pronunciation of his name.
Who is the wife of Anubis?
His consort is Anupet, also transcribed Anput, whose name is simply the feminine form of Inpu. Some traditions pair him instead with the cow goddess Hesat. From his union with Anupet is born Kebechet, goddess of the lustral water, tasked with refreshing and purifying the dead.
Are Anubis and Anput brother and sister?
No. Anput is his consort, that is, his female divine counterpart, not his sister. The confusion comes from how close the two names are, Inpu and Anupet, which are the same root in the masculine and the feminine. The device is common in the Egyptian pantheon.
What is the power of Anubis?
He rules over the whole funerary domain: patronage of mummification, the ritual of the opening of the mouth, the guiding of souls through the Duat, the guarding of the necropolises and the adjusting of the scales during the weighing of the heart. He does not judge the dead, he guarantees that their passage is fair.
How do you pronounce Anpu?
The name is pronounced roughly "an-poo", with a long oo. The scholarly restitution of the Egyptian name gives rather Inpu. Since vowels are not written in hieroglyphic script, any pronunciation remains a modern reconstruction.
Is Anubis an evil god?
Not at all, and it is a common misreading driven by his appearance and by popular culture. Anubis is neither demon nor executioner. He is a benevolent guardian and a guide, warrant of the dignity of the dead and of the fairness of the judgement. The dreaded figure of the tribunal is Ammit, not him.
How long was Anubis worshipped?
His cult is attested over an exceptional span, from the 32nd century BCE to the 4th and 6th centuries CE. That makes nearly three thousand five hundred years of continuity, one of the most enduring devotions in the entire history of religions.
