W832
W832
Wood statue of a crouching jackal, probably Anubis. Such artefacts were often placed on top of coffins. Late Dynastic Period.
The item was conserved in 1998 with the addition of ears made out of an inert material. The piece is missing a tail.
It is often difficult to tell whether representations of dog or jackal headed gods are Anubis, Seth, Wepwawet or Duamutef. Statues like that above are usually assumed to represent Anubis.
Jackals, are animals who frequent the areas between civilization and the desert, and were thus perhaps considered animals of areas between worlds, between life and death for example. Therefore gods such as Anubis and Wepwawet, who were considered liminal would be depicted in jackal form. Anubis, the jackal god depicted here, led the dead from one world to another and was also the god of the first mummification.
Wooden statues of recumbent Anubis jackals or dogs were sometimes put among New Kingdom funerary furnishings for example in the tombs of Tutankhamun and Horemheb. In the 20th Dynasty recumbent wooden Anubis’s are known from the tomb of Nedjmet Deir el-Bahri (Kwiatkowski 2011, fig. 4). In the late 8th century BC, wooden jackals were often placed on vaulted tops of rectangular outer coffins and a large number survive from Thebes. This item probably dates to the Late Period, though some examples are a little later. The tail would either hang over the end of the coffin, or is made to lie flat with the body.
According to legend Anubis was the son of Nephthys and Osiris and practised his embalming skills for the first time on his father. It is likely that embalmers wore animal headed masks, at least in the more public aspects of their work.
Titles of Anubis
The title tepy-dju-ef (‘he who is upon his mountain’) presents him as god keeping watch over the necropolis from a vantage point.
Anubis is frequently cited as he who is in wt or town on many funerary stela and also in the Book of the Dead. It has been suggested that this refers to his Oasis as that is where jackals retreat to when in the desert.
Anubis is also given the title nb tA dsr, ‘lord of the sacred land’. This was associated with burial places. Other funerary gods such as Hathor, were referred to as ‘lords of the sacred land’.
Further Reading
Kwiatkowski, K. 2011. Zoomorficzne figurki Anubisa (Anubis Zoomorphic Figurines). Folia Praehistorica Posnaniensia, XVI, 2011, 135-154.
