I took the above picture at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum we visited a couple weeks ago. Anubis has always been one of my favorite mythological Gods. Him and Bastet are definitely my favorite Egyptian gods/goddesses, although Thoth is up there on my list as well.
In case you are unfamiliar with Anubis, he is the one often shown with the black dog head. He was the God of embalming and the dead, and the lord of the underworld until later replaced by Osiris. It is believed that he was shown with a black jackal head because jackals were often seen in cemeteries at the time.
Anubis also attended the “weighing of the heart” after someone died, to see if that person was pure enough to enter the underworld (Duat as it was called back then). Each person’s heart was weighed against Ma’at (truth) represented by a feather. If the person’s heart was light and pure, they would go on to a heavenly afterlife, but if their heart was heavy and evil, they would be devoured by Ammit (the demonic devourer of the dead).
As much of Greek mythology was inspired by Egyptian mythology, I always see the figure of Hades as an outgrowth of the figure of Anubis (with some Osiris thrown in too, but after all, Anubis WAS lord of the underworld first!)
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