This ancient Egyptian deity, said to preside over the underworld, first appeared in Egyptian writings around 4,500 years ago. Anubis was depicted as a half-man, half-jackal; the latter animal was associated with death and graveyards in Egypt due to the threat it posed of exhuming bodies for consumption. Anubis is known as a son of Ra (think the Egyptian version of Zeus or Odin), but the facts surrounding him changed as he became more associated with Osiris, another god of the Underworld who became more important later in history. The mummification process and the Egyptian belief that one can bring earthly objects with them into the afterlife are popular concepts in modern interpretations of this culture; it is the meeting with Anubis for which the dearly departed were preparing. Anubis has been misconstrued and misrepresented several times since the advent of the cinema, most recently and memorably in the American film “The Mummy Returns”, in which he is depicted as actually having a vested interest in the events of the living world. This is inaccurate; rather than a “soul harvester”, Anubis was more of a liaison between one place and the next.
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