Walk through any museum's Egyptian wing and you'll pass him eventually. Black-skinned. Jackal-headed. Standing very still beside a set of scales. Most people glance, read the little placard that says "god of death," and move on.
That placard is wrong. Or at least, it's missing the whole point.
Anubis wasn't the one who killed you. He wasn't the one who decided your time was up. He was the one waiting on the other side — the figure who made sure that whatever came next was handled with dignity, and measured with precision. The Egyptians didn't fear him the way you'd fear a predator. They trusted him the way you'd trust a good judge. Someone who can't be bribed. Someone who's seen everything and still shows up.
That's a very different thing. And it explains why his image has lasted five thousand years without losing a single gram of its weight.
He's older than you think
Most people know Osiris. Osiris is the famous one — king of the dead, resurrected god, the one the big myths are built around. But Anubis was there first.
His earliest appearances date to the First Dynasty of Egypt. That's roughly 3100 BCE — before the great pyramids, before most of what we'd recognize as "Egyptian civilization" had fully taken shape. In those early centuries, Anubis was the primary funerary god. Full stop. The one who ran the whole operation.
His Egyptian name was Inpu, sometimes Anpu. "Anubis" is the Greek version that spread later, once Egypt had become famous and everyone wanted a piece of what it knew. He accumulated titles the way important figures do: First of the Westerners (the land of the dead was to the west, where the sun disappears), Lord of the Sacred Land, He Who Is in the Place of Embalming, Master of Secrets.
Read those slowly. None of them say "god of death." All of them describe someone who manages what happens after.
The jackal and what the Egyptians actually saw
Jackals lived near Egyptian cemeteries. They scavenged at the edges of the necropolis. Any other culture might have made them a symbol of threat, or at least left them as a bad omen.
The Egyptians looked at the same animal and thought: if the jackal already haunts the place of the dead, we should make him its guardian.
That's the move. Not fear. Consecration.
And then there's the color. Every depiction of Anubis renders him in black, a black that has nothing to do with darkness or death in the Western sense. In Egypt, black was the color of Nile silt. The thick, rich mud left behind after the annual flood — the substance that made agriculture possible in the middle of a desert. Black meant life coming back. Black meant the soil that resurrects.
So when you see the black jackal, you're not looking at something sinister. You're looking at a symbol of renewal wearing the shape of a vigilant animal. That's what the people who built the temples actually meant.
The scales, his most important job
The scene shows up in the Book of the Dead, which is less a book and more a collection of spells and instructions given to the dead to help them navigate what came next. In the Hall of Two Truths, Anubis stands at a set of scales.
On one side: your heart. On the other: a single feather, belonging to Ma'at, the goddess of truth and cosmic order.
If your heart is lighter than the feather, meaning you lived honestly, didn't cause unnecessary suffering, treated people decently — you pass. The Field of Reeds, the Egyptian version of paradise, opens to you.
If your heart is heavier weighed down by cruelty, dishonesty, the damage you chose to do, a creature called Ammit (part lion, part hippo, part crocodile) destroys it. You don't go to some punishment realm. You simply stop existing.
Anubis doesn't tip the scales. He doesn't advocate for anyone. He reads what's there.
That's why he was trusted. The Egyptians understood, intuitively, that the most terrifying kind of justice isn't the kind that can be argued with. It's the kind that simply measures correctly.
Anubis and Osiris - sorting out the confusion
They get mixed up constantly. Here's the short version:
Anubis escorts you there and conducts the Weighing. He's the guardian of the process, the one present at the transition.
Osiris rules the realm of the dead and delivers the final verdict. He's the judge and the king.
They're not rivals — they're colleagues. And the story that connects them is worth knowing: when Set murdered Osiris and scattered his body across Egypt, it was Anubis who gathered the pieces and performed the first act of mummification. He brought Osiris back together. That act became the template for how Egyptians treated their own dead for thousands of years afterward.
So Anubis is literally the reason Osiris was able to become king of the underworld. He made the resurrection possible.
Like the Ankh, another Egyptian symbol built entirely around the idea of life continuing beyond death — Anubis was never about the end. He was about what the end makes possible.
Read our full exploration of the Ankh and eternal life →
Why his image is still being worn today
Five millennia is a long time for anything to stay relevant. The fact that Anubis still ends up on rings, pendants, and tattoos — chosen by people who weren't raised in any Egyptian religious tradition is worth thinking about for a second.
He's not popular because he's scary. He's popular because the thing he represents is genuinely useful.
Some people are drawn to him during periods of real change — a job ended, a relationship finished, a version of themselves they've had to leave behind. Anubis is specifically the patron of crossings. He doesn't promise the other side is better. He promises the passage is honest. For people in the middle of hard transitions, that's more valuable than comfort.
Others connect to the Weighing of the Heart. The idea that what you actually carried inside you, not your reputation, not your public image, but the real weight of how you lived is the only thing that counts. In a world that rewards performance, there's something almost radical about a mythology built around the premise that the performance doesn't matter.
And then there are people who are simply drawn to Egyptian aesthetics and the depth of its symbolism, its refusal to separate beauty from meaning, its capacity to hold complexity without resolving it into something simpler. Anubis has one of the most immediately recognizable silhouettes in all of ancient art.
Anubis jewelry from VarVar
VarVar's Egypt Gods collection is built around the real mythology — not the cinema version, not the Halloween shorthand, but the actual weight of what these figures meant to people who organized entire civilizations around them.
👉 Buy Anubis Pendant from Sterling Silver
The Anubis pieces in the collection work best as what the Egyptians would have recognized as a talisman: an object chosen consciously, for a specific reason, worn close to the body as a reminder of something you want to carry.
The jackal-headed silhouette in sterling silver is immediately readable — as aesthetic object and as symbol. If you're navigating something difficult, it's the piece that says you're moving through it with intention. Not rushing. Not avoiding. Moving.
For those drawn to the broader world of Egyptian symbolism, the Secrets of Egypt collection offers pieces built around the same tradition — Ankh, scarab, Eye of Horus — each carrying its own specific energy within the same mythological system.
Explore the Egypt Gods collection →
Quick answers — Anubis
Is Anubis good or evil?
Neither, in the way we usually mean those words. He serves Ma'at — cosmic order and truth — without favoritism. He doesn't punish and he doesn't reward. He measures. Most people who've dealt with genuinely fair institutions find that more reassuring than threatening.
What exactly is Anubis the god of?
Mummification, funerary rites, and the transition of souls through the afterlife. He presides over the Weighing of the Heart. He's not the cause of death — he's the one who ensures what follows death is handled correctly.
What does wearing Anubis jewelry mean?
For most people: an acknowledgment of impermanence, and a commitment to moving through change with integrity. Some wear it as protection during hard periods. Some wear it simply because the mythology is rich and the aesthetic is striking. Those aren't mutually exclusive reasons.
Why is Anubis always black?
Because for Egyptians, black was the color of the Nile's fertile silt — the soil that brought crops back after every flood. It signified regeneration and renewal. Anubis in black is a god of rebirth, not destruction.
Is wearing Anubis jewelry culturally appropriate?
Egyptian symbols have been adopted, adapted, and reinterpreted across cultures for thousands of years — that process began during Egypt's own lifetime, not after it. What matters is whether the symbol means something genuine to you.
