| Anubis | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||||
| Other names | Inpu Inpu Anpu Yinepu | |||||
| Name in hieroglyphs | Egyptian:
| |||||
| Major cult center | Lycopolis Cynopolis | |||||
| Symbol | Mummy gauze, fetish, jackal, flail | |||||
| Personal information | ||||||
| Parents | Nepthys and Set Osiris (Middle and New kingdom), or Ra (Old kingdom). | |||||
| Siblings | Wepwawet | |||||
| Consort | Anput Nephthys | |||||
| Offspring | Kebechet | |||||
| Equivalents | ||||||
| Greek equivalent | Hades Hermes | |||||
Anubis (/əˈnjuːbɪs/; Ancient Greek: Ἄνουβις), also known as Inpu, Inpw, Jnpw, or Anpu in Ancient Egyptian (Coptic: ⲁⲛⲟⲩⲡ, romanized: Anoup), is the god of funerary rites, protector of graves, and guide to the Duat, in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head.
Name edit
Hieroglyphics edit
The theonym Anubis comes from the ancient Egyptian inpu (Inpu, Anpu, Anup, Anupu),[Note 1] through its Hellenized form Ancient Greek: Ἄνουβις.[1][2][3][4] Before the Greeks arrived in Egypt, around the 7th century BC, he was known as Anpu or Inpu. The root of the name in ancient Egyptian language means "a royal child." Inpu has a root to "inp", which means "to decay".
Anubis, or a canid god of the type of Anubis, is among the oldest deities of ancient Egypt. The hieroglyph of the canid lying down[Note 2] has been known since the predynastic period. Archaeological excavations at Umm El Qa'ab, the royal necropolis of the city of Abydos, led to the discovery of potsherds and ivory plaques bearing the ideogram of the lying canine, dated to Scorpion I of the Protodynastic Period and the Pharaoh Den of the 1st Dynasty c. 3200 BC – c. 3000 BC.[5] During the Old Kingdom, the hieroglyph is frequently encountered in the texts of funeral offerings. He is generally interpreted by Egyptologists as Anubis. It is, however, difficult to attribute it to this deity alone, as the name "Anubis" was not written with phonetic hieroglyphs until the 6th Dynasty, around 2200 BCE. On monuments of the period, the ideogram is the only mode of writing during the 4th and 5th dynasties. Phonetic writing, with or without the determinative of canid, appears occasionally at the end of the 6th dynasty, under the reign of Pepi II Neferkare, and only becomes frequent from the First Intermediate Period c. 2180BCE – c. 2040 BCE.[6] For the most ancient times, the reading of the hieroglyph of the canid lying in Inpu (Anubis) is not definitive. The other possibilities are relatively numerous: Khenty Imentyu ("He who is at the head of the Westerners"), Inpu Khenty Imentyu ("Anubis, the Foremost of the Westerners"),[7] Sedi ("Foremost of the Westerners"), the tail"), Oupiu ("the one who opens (the eldest)"), Meniu ("the Guardian of the Herd"), Sheta ("the Mysterious One") and Sab, a generic term used to designate Egyptian jackals and dogs of deserts.[8][9]
Etymology edit
The meaning of the Inpu name (Anubis) remains the subject of numerous debates between specialists and no consensus has yet emerged. The same situation applies to other important deities. Despite many hypotheses, the theonyms Ra, Min, Ptah, Osiris, Set and Anubis do not have scientifically satisfactory etymologies.[10]
Chart
The oldest explanation of the name Anubis dates back to the late Ptolemaic dynasty and appears in the Jumilhac Papyrus (VI, 6–7). This religious monograph, translated in 1961 by Jacques Vandier, exposes the main myths and rituals of the Cynopolitan nome in Middle Egypt. It is stated that Anubis received his name from his mother Isis and that it "was pronounced concerning wind, water, and the desert". These three words are the symbolic representations of the three phonetic hieroglyphs that make up the root inp of the name Anubis. The root i represents the wind, the wavelet n evokes the water of the Nile and, the root p is interpreted as the symbol of the desert.[11][12] According to Georges Posener, this sacred etymology would aim to cement an association between the gods Shu (wind), Osiris (water), and Anubis (desert).[13]: 76
Many modern scholars have broken the rules of etymology to find meaning in the name Anubis. Before the decipherment of the hieroglyphs in 1752, the theologian and orientalist Paul Ernest Jablonski linked the name of Anubis to the Coptic word nub (gold) claiming that jackals were associated with this metal.[14] In 1872, the English Egyptologist Charles Wycliffe Goodwin put forward suggested that the Egyptian word inpu was a corruption of the Semitic root alp, the numerous variants of which would be used to designate animals.[13]: 76 Find original source
German Egyptologists Kurt Sethe and Hermann Kees considered the meaning of inpu as "dog", after noting that in ancient Egyptian the word was also applied to designate a "young prince". In 1929, the Italian Giulio Farina argued that the Egyptian word inpu was similar to the Semitic word ṷlp or ṷulūp which designates the jackal. In an article published posthumously in 1972, Pierre Lacau writes that several theriomorph deities take their name from their sacred animal. Regarding Anubis, inp is an archaic term used to designate a canine, and Inpou, the name of the canine deity. The term inp having been deified, the word sab would have taken over to designate wild canids.[13]: 76–77 Find original article In 1976, Dimitri Meeks translated the name inp as "one who lies on his stomach", this attitude is the traditional pose of the animal form of the god. He also notes that a passage from the Coffin Texts compares the name of Anubis to the word inp meaning "putrefaction", a hapax legomenon from a pun made from the words irpu ("wine") and repu ("fermentation").[13]
More recently, in 2005, British Egyptologist Terence DuQuesne who authored a monograph on the Egyptian jackal gods, proposed that the term inpu (vocalized under *yanup), as an onomatopoeia aimed at to imitate the howl of the jackal, under the Egyptian practice of forming the names of animals from their cry: miu for the cat, reret for the pig, aâ for the donkey.[15]
Epithets edit
The main epithets applied to Anubis highlight his role as funerary divinity; readily describe him as being the head of the entire funerary domain or as the head of one of the subdivisions of this domain. From the beginning of Egyptian civilization, Anubis was given his five main epithets; Khenty imentyu ("Foremost of the Westerners — the Dead"), khenty ta djeser ("Lord of the Sacred Land"), tepy djouef ("He Who Is upon His Mountain"), Khenty seh netjer ("He who presides over the divine pavilion"), and imy-ut ("He Who Is in the Place of Embalming"); the last four persisting until the Greco-Roman era.[16][17]
Foremost of the Westerners edit
The epithet khenty imentyu "Foremost of the Westerners" (variants: khenty imentet "He Who is at the Head of the West", and neb imentet "Lord of the West") is mainly attributed to Osiris until the very end of the Old Kingdom, when he became the major divinity of the funerary domain, but Anubis was never be completely deprived of it.[16] This epithet poses many problems because Khenti-Amentiu is also the name of the canid god of the city of Abydos attested from the 1st dynasty by archaeological documents. It is therefore a question of distinguishing the name of an independent divinity and the homonym function attributed to Anubis from the 5th dynasty and to Osiris from the 6th dynasty.[18]
Lord of the Sacred Land edit
Aspects of Anubis, as a deity of the underworld, are reflected in the epithets Khenty ta djeser—"He who is the head of the sacred land", and Neb ta djeser—"Lord of the Sacred Land". The first expression is the oldest, the second only appearing under the 4th dynasty (around 2500 BCE), alone or in association with the epithet khenty seh netjer. The "sacred land" is a designation for the necropolis and, by extension, for the entire realm beyond. According to a New Kingdom stele kept at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, the ta djeser is also a toponym used to designate the necropolis of the Thinite nome (the region of the city of Abydos) whose links with canine deities have been attested since the most ancient historical times. Neb ta djeser is mainly attributed to Anubis, but very commonly also to the god Osiris, mainly during the Middle Kingdom, in Abydos, and the rest of the country.[19][20]
He Who Is upon His Mountain edit
Tepy djuef or "He Who Is upon His Mountain" is one of the most frequent epithets associated with Anubis since the beginning of Egyptian history and until the Roman period. It is very often found on the walls of mastabas ((mud-brick tombs) from the Old Kingdom and on steles erected at Abydos during the Middle Kingdom. The expression provides geographical precision as to the places where the Egyptians installed their necropolises. The epithet depicts the power of Anubis exercised on the rocky hills (gebel in Arabic) located between the end of the cultivable lands bordering the Nile and the beginning of the Libyan and Arabian deserts. In this mountainous area, the terrain is very rugged but very rich in cut stones as well as precious ores and metals, used in the most sumptuous funerals.[21] Egyptologist Georg Möller proposed a geographical explanation by linking the epithet to the toponym djuefet — "the Mountain of the Viper" — the name of the 12th nome of Upper Egypt, a region located opposite the dedicated Lycopolitan nome to the canid deity Upuaut (Wepwawet).[22][23] The Egyptian word dju survives in the Coptic language under the term tou, which is used to create toponyms linked to desert mountains and remote monasteries.[24]
He who Presides over the Divine Pavilion edit
The epithet khenty seh netjer, "He who presides over the divine pavilion", appears regularly in the oldest offering papyrus' inscribed, during the Old Kingdom, on the walls of private mastabas as well as on those of the text pyramids of the 6th dynasty. The seh netjer is a temporary structure (tent) or a durable structure (building), a liminal place located between the world of the living and the realm of the dead, an airlock entrance to the necropolis. It is a place where Anubis exercises his guardianship over the dead, transforming from mummification. The chest which represents a temple or a naos and on which Anubis is often depicted lying down is possibly a representation of the seh netjer.[25]
He Who Is in the Place of Embalming edit
The best-known function of the god Anubis was expressed in the epithet jmy-wt (Imiut or the Imiut fetish), meaning "He who is in the place of embalming", and "He of the bandage".[26] He was also called ḫnty zḥ-nṯr "He who presides over the god's booth", in which "booth" could refer either to the place where embalming was carried out or the pharaoh's burial chamber.[27][28] The precise meaning of this expression is not known. The word ut is related to mummification and more particularly to the wrappings, while the priests who participate in the wrapping of bodies are designated under the generic term utyu. As a noun, the word ut also refers to the place where the mummification ritual takes place. It is also possible that this word is related to the term uhat, meaning "oasis", a place where many products originate, such as the resins necessary for the preservation of bodies. Under the Ptolemaic dynasty, the toponym Out designates the 17th-century necropolis of Upper Egypt, a sacred place strongly linked to Anubis.[26]
Iconography edit
Ancient Egypt was a civilization that placed great importance on images. With its approximately 700 hieroglyphics, its writing easily demonstrates this. This art of iconography is also noted in the depiction of the divine world. The appearance of the god Anubis, symbolized by a canine, is surely dictated by his funerary functions; jackals and dogs haunting and guarding cemeteries located on the edge of deserts.
The Divine canine edit
Iconic animal edit
Similar to other Egyptian funerary deities, such as Wepwawet, Khenti-Amentiu, and Sed(y), Anubis belongs to the group of canine deities. The general morphology of Anubis in his fully animal form, with its pointed snout, two erect ears, thin torso, four long legs, and elongated tail, clearly indicates that it is a member of the family of the Canidae which includes in East Africa wolves, jackals, foxes, wild dogs, and domestic dogs. However, the combination of morphological elements of Anubis does not correspond to any known extant species of canid. The animal emblem of the god seems much more to be a mixture of several types. If the head and muzzle correspond to a wide range of canids, the pointed ears are especially similar to those of the fox, while the slender body is reminiscent of that of the greyhound. Anubis' tail resembles that of the jackal, but is much longer and narrower; the fox's tail, if it falls to the ground like that of Anubis, is much bushier and thicker. Additionally, Anubis is in most cases depicted with black fur, a color that is quite uncommon among various canid species.[29]
Throughout the 20th century, many specialists have estimated that Anubis' animal is a hybrid being, dog-wolf, wolf-jackal, jackal-dog, etc.[30] According to George Hart, writer and lecturer at the British Museum:[31]
"[T]he dog Anubis is probably a jackal [...] But other dogs, for example, the rust-colored pariah, may have served as a prototype. Anubis represents perhaps the quintessence of the dogs of the desert."
The assimilation of Anubis to the jackal, specifically the Golden Jackal, is based on a behavioral criterion: this nocturnal canid is known to haunt cemeteries at night, and more particularly around freshly dug graves, to dig up and devour corpses. This behavior would have been associated by the Ancient Egyptians with death and by extension with mummification and funeral ceremonies. The black color of Anubis is a symbol mainly explained in two ways: first by the black coloring of the body of the deceased under the effect of the resins used during embalming, then by the association of the color black with the concept of regeneration, the flood of the Nile bringing, each year, black and fertile silt to agricultural lands.[32]
Burrowing canids edit
The jackal is not the only canid to roam cemeteries, however, as foxes and hyenas do the same. Since Predynastic Egypt, when the dead were buried in shallow graves, jackals have been strongly associated with cemeteries because they were scavengers who uncovered human bodies and ate their flesh.[33][34] Some Egyptologists theorize that Anubis was represented in canine form because of this burrowing behavior, the main role of a funerary divinity being to hide mortal remains from the sight of the living.[35]
Representations edit
Animal form edit
Anubis is depicted in the form of hieroglyphs, murals, bas-reliefs, amulets, and statues throughout the history of ancient Egypt, from the predynastic period until the Roman occupation. The oldest and most common representation is the animal form, such as a skinny black canine on alert, lying on its stomach on the ground, or a reliquary chest.[36] From the most ancient times, a rare hieroglyphic sign depicts the canine lying down, with a large feather coming out of its back. This is theorized as an association of Anubis with the god Shu (vital breath) or with Maat (truth-justice), the canine exercising the function of judge in the court of souls. The feather also appears on the hairstyle of Anput, the goddess of Cynopolis, it is possible that we are in the presence of a way of differentiating the male Anubis (without feather) from the female Anput (with feather) or else of a scriptural process allowing Anubis to be linked to the Cynopolitan nome.[37] Representations depicting a canine lying down holding the flagellum and the Sekhem scepter in its front legs, or with the flagellum protruding from his back are also found.[38]
It is generally accepted that the representations of the canine standing and walking on all four legs are also related to the god Wepwawet. This assertion is verified in a general way, but any systematization should be avoided, in rare occurrences–from the 4th dynasty–this sign can designate Anubis, the opposite being also true. The hieroglyph of the standing canine also serves as a determinative in the name of the divinity Wepwawet, the adze, nua, and the word sab.[39]
Images: Anubis lying down
Hybrid form edit
Towards the end of the 2nd dynasty, the first representations of hybrid deities appeared, combining animal and human elements into Egyptian iconography.[40] The oldest attestation of a god with the head of a jackal dates back to this period and appears in the form of graffiti on a fragment of a porphyry bowl, of unknown provenance and kept, since 1977, at the British Museum in London. The god, whose name is unknown, is shown standing, holding the Was-sceptre in his right hand and an ankh symbol in his left hand. The appearance of the head with its characteristic snout is suggested as Anubis by Egyptologists, but it has also been proposed that it depicts Seth or Ash.[41] The oldest attestation of the image of Anubis, as an anthropomorphic dates back to the 5th dynasty, and appears on a fragment of a relief from the high temple of the pyramid of Niuserrê. This block of stone discovered at the beginning of the 20th century has since been exhibited at the Neues Museum in Berlin. The fragmented piece depicts a king seated on his throne holding three ankh signs in his left hand and receiving three others in his right hand, from Anubis. The god, standing in the attitude of walking, vivifies the sovereign by touching his lips and nose with a seventh ankh. The goddess Wadjet, a symbol of Lower Egypt, stands motionless behind the king and touches his shoulder. It is likely that, in this context, Anubis symbolizes Upper Egypt. The lower register of this scene shows thirteen bent men performing the Khebes-Ta ritual or "Hacking up of the Earth", a ritual gesture linked to spring renewal, but also known to be performed during the inauguration of the temples.[42]
Exceptional shapes edit
In addition to the representations of Anubis as a canine or as a man with the head of a canine, there are less common modes of representation. The only known image of Anubis as a fully anthropomorphic divinity is found at Abydos, on a painted relief from the funerary temple of Ramesses II, built during the first years of this pharaoh's reign, around -1280. Another uncommon image of Anubis is that of a bird with the head of a canine. The occurrences of the soul- Ba of Anubis were found in the necropolis of El-Deir (Kharga Oasis) on a fragment of a painted cartonnage, in Dendera, in a relief of the hathoric kiosk on the roof of the temple, on a shroud of a man buried in Deir el-Medina, in the tomb of Aeacus (Dakhla Oasis) and a tomb from the Roman era.[43] The snake-bodied Anubis is another rare type of representation. Two examples were found in Qasr Dush and Ain El Labakha, respectively on an element of a funerary bed and a cardboard box of a mummy (Roman period). The oldest representation of the serpentiform Anubis is attested at Deir el-Medina, in the tomb of Sennedjem, on a painting representing a funerary bed (19th dynasty).[44] During the Greco-Roman era, the theme of Anubis "with the key" developed where the god is, in magical papyrus, "the one who holds the keys to Hades" (Hell) or "the bearer of keys". In iconography, Anubis holds the key in his hand (man with the head of a canine) or on his neck (canine) and is found on sarcophagi, shrouds, and mummy wrappings. The German Egyptologist Siegfried Morenz saw a connection with the Greek divinity Aeacus, one of the three judges of the Underworld. Jean-Claude Grenier refutes this idea and favors the hypothesis of an adaptation of religious iconography caused by the diffusion of the key in the daily lives of individuals.[45]
Mythological elements edit
Osirian myth edit
Origins edit
Osiris or the ideal mummy edit
Anubis in the Osirian myth edit
Mothers, multiple traditions edit
Adulterous son of Osiris edit
Anubis, the unifier of the members of Osiris edit
Pastoral and butcher divinity edit
Cattle Master edit
Anubis and the bovids edit
Provider of offerings edit
Tale of the Two Brothers edit
Anubis and the bull Bata edit
Bata and his multiple lives edit
Bata or Seth captured edit
Necropolises and sanctuaries edit
National Egyptian belief edit
Master of the necropolis edit
Pharaoh as Anubis edit
Mastabas of the Old Kingdom edit
Chapel of Anubis in Deir el-Bahari edit
Anoubieion of Saqqara edit
Regional god of Cynopolitan edit
Hardai (Cynopolis) edit
17th century sign edit
Anupet, consort of Anubis edit
Funeral functions edit
Mummification edit
Patronage edit
Chief embalmers edit
Funeral mysteries edit
Imy-out fetish edit
Qebehout, the lustral water edit
Ouâbet edit
Embalming edit
Preservation of bodies edit
Process edit
Revivification edit
Ressurection edit
Drink your heart out edit
Embalming or end of an illness edit
Mouth opening edit
Invigoration ritual edit
Seth or the sacrificed murderer edit
Fights against Seth edit
Anubis Adze edit
Ancestralization edit
Tombs edit
Protector of the Mummy of Osiris edit
Tomb Protector edit
Psychopomp Anubis edit
Western paths edit
Guide to the Dead edit
Judge of the Court of the Dead edit
First certificates edit
Weighing of the heart edit
Out of Egypt edit
Africa edit
Cynocephalus of the Sahara edit
Nubian funerary cults edit
Myths of the White Nile ethnic groups edit
Greco-Roman world edit
Isiac cults edit
Hermanubis edit
Anubophores edit
The Barker edit
Posterity edit
Cynocephalous Saint Christopher edit
French-speaking poetry edit
Fictional character edit
See also edit
References edit
Notes edit
- ^ Egyptian hieroglyphic writing
- ^ Hieroglyphs E15 and E16 of Gardiner's classification of hieroglyphs
Citations edit
- ^ Rachet 1988, p. 22.
- ^ Spence & Putman 1998, pp. 49–51.
- ^ Coulter & Turner 2000, p. 58.
- ^ Desroches Noblecourt 2004, p. 106.
- ^ DuQuesne 2005, pp. 37, 41.
- ^ DuQuesne 2005, p. 75.
- ^ DuQuesne 2005, pp. 37–40.
- ^ Hollis 2008, pp. 74–75.
- ^ Bonnamy & Sadek 2010, pp. 610, 146, 265, 647, 512.
- ^ Hornung 1986, p. 57.
- ^ Betrò 1995, pp. 147, 163, 174.
- ^ Jacq 1998, pp. 175–176.
- ^ a b c d DuQuesne 2005, pp. 76–78.
- ^ Jablonski 1752, pp. 19–22.
- ^ DuQuesne 2005, pp. 80–81.
- ^ a b Hollis 2008, pp. 79–80.
- ^ DuQuesne 2005, pp. 151–175.
- ^ DuQuesne 2005, pp. 162–168, 384–389.
- ^ DuQuesne 2005, pp. 154–157.
- ^ Grenier 1977, pp. 4–5.
- ^ Grenier 1977, p. 5.
- ^ Hollis 2008, pp. 80–81.
- ^ DuQuesne 2005, pp. 160–161.
- ^ Grenier 1977, p. 5.
- ^ DuQuesne 2005, p. 152-154.
- ^ a b DuQuesne 2005, p. 157-159.
- ^ Hart 1986, pp. 23–24.
- ^ Wilkinson 2003, pp. 188–90.
- ^ Evans 2008, pp. 17–18.
- ^ Evans 2008, p. 22.
- ^ Hart 2005, p. 25.
- ^ Evans 2008, pp. 18–19.
- ^ Wilkinson 1999, p. 262.
- ^ Freeman 1997, p. 91.
- ^ Evans 2008, pp. 20–23.
- ^ Evans 2008, p. 17.
- ^ DuQuesne 2005, pp. 37–49.
- ^ Bonnamy & Sadek 2010, p. 893.
- ^ DuQuesn 2005, pp. 63, 74–75.
- ^ Hornung 1986, p. 95.
- ^ DuQuesne 2005, pp. 87, 94.
- ^ DuQuesne 2005, pp. 91–92, 98–99.
- ^ Dunand & Lichtenberg 2012, p. 433.
- ^ Dunand & Lichtenberg 2012, p. 434.
- ^ Grenier 1977, pp. 34–36.