Anubis and dogs: why Egypt's jackal god looks like a dog

Part 1

Was Anubis a dog, a jackal, or something else

Anubis was traditionally depicted with the head of a jackal or wild dog, a god linked to death. The animal long called the Egyptian jackal, known scientifically as Canis aureus lupaster, turns out on genetic analysis to sit within the grey wolf species complex rather than with the golden jackal. Because of this, the scientists who did the work began calling it the African wolf instead of a jackal. Taxonomic assignment also identified African wolf individuals across Algeria, Mali and Senegal, extending its known range well beyond Egypt. That kind of confusion about which wild canid was which in Egypt suggests ancient artists may not have been picturing one single animal when they carved or painted Anubis.

Your own dog, whatever the breed, is not what Egyptian artists had in mind when they pictured Anubis, and that gap is part of what makes him a myth rather than a portrait of one real animal.

Part 2

The Saqqara dog catacombs

The catacomb sat next to a temple built in Anubis's honor at Saqqara, a burial ground near the ancient capital of Memphis. A French archaeologist named Jacques de Morgan published a paper on the wider necropolis in 1897, but gave the dog catacomb itself little attention. A more thorough study, led by Paul Nicholson, a professor of archaeology at Cardiff University, later gave the site its first in-depth survey and was published in the journal Antiquity. The central passage ran about 568 feet, with side corridors widening the space to about 459 feet across.

• Researchers estimated the catacomb once held nearly 8 million mummified dogs.
• About 92 percent of the remains found there were dogs, with the rest jackals, foxes, falcons, cats and mongooses.
• Many mummies were later disturbed by grave robbers, and industrialists likely used them for fertilizer.

Paul Nicholson suggested that pilgrims visiting Saqqara saw these mummies as a way of showing gratitude to the gods, Anubis most of all. A few older dogs had more elaborate burials and may have lived at the temple itself. The animal cults connected to sites like this stayed popular for centuries, roughly from 747 BC to 30 BC, before declining under Roman rule. If you have ever left a note or a small gift at a memorial, you already understand the impulse behind these offerings, even if the scale here is much larger than anything you would do for your own dog.

Part 3

Why Anubis took a canine form

The temple and catacomb built for Anubis stood at Saqqara, a burial ground. Historians studying the wider animal cults have linked their popularity partly to a sense of national identity, since Egypt was invaded by outsiders such as the Libyans and the Persians during this period. Choosing a canine face for a death god at a cemetery site made a kind of sense to the people who worshiped there, even if we cannot fully reconstruct their reasoning today. Your dog, safe at home with you, has no connection to any of this history, which is worth remembering when the two ideas get mixed together online.

Part 4

Anubis's role at Saqqara and in the afterlife

Sources on the Saqqara catacomb describe Anubis as the god the temple and burial ground were built to honor. The offerings there were vast, with the catacomb once holding nearly 8 million mummified dogs, and animal cults stayed popular from about 747 BC to 30 BC. When you look at your own dog resting nearby, it can help to remember that the Anubis story is about worship and symbolism, not about the dogs people kept as friends.

Part 5

What the science says about the animal behind the myth

Genetic studies of mitochondrial DNA placed this animal, C. aureus lupaster, within the grey wolf species complex alongside the Holarctic wolf, the Indian wolf and the Himalayan wolf. A separate study estimated the African wolf lineage split off during the Late Pleistocene, around the same time as Holarctic wolves and dogs, and had a large effective population size in the past. Field observations in Senegal also let researchers describe how the African wolf looks and behaves differently from the sympatric golden jackal. You do not need to follow the taxonomy debate closely to enjoy the Anubis story, but knowing the animal's real identity is still murky helps explain why depictions of the god vary.