Anubis

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Anubis in hieroglyphs

Anubis is the Greek name for the ancient god in Egyptian mythology who looks like a man with the head of a jackal. Jackals are predators that look like dogs and live in Africa.

People did not like jackals in ancient Egypt, because the animals messed up graves. The Egyptian people wanted to end this by deifying them. Deifying means in this case that they created a god that was a jackal as well. Therefore the god of the dead Anubis looked like a dog or jackal.

Anubis became the god of the dead, because the jackals were often in grave yards at night. This made the people think that the jackals protected the dead people in the graves. The priests that mummified the dead kings (these kings are called pharaohs) were also dressed up as jackals. Now that the jackal had become a holy animal, dogs and jackals were kept as pets in the temples. After their death, they were mummified and placed in the temples.

Anubis was the protector of the mummies against bad powers.It is also said he invented mummification. After a while Anubis also became the god of the dead. The Egyptian people believed that Anubis helped with the ceremony that was performed with people once they arrived in heaven. In this ceremony, the heart of the dead was weighed to see if the deceased person had lived a good life.