Although he does not appear in many myths, he was extremely popular with Egyptians and those of other cultures.[9] The Greeks linked him to their god Hermes, the god who guided the dead to the afterlife. The pairing was later known as Hermanubis. Anubis was heavily worshipped because, despite modern beliefs, he gave the people hope. People marveled in the guarantee that their body would be respected at death, their soul would be protected and justly judged.[9]
Anubis had male priests who sported wood masks with the god's likeness when performing rituals.[9][10] His cult center was at Cynopolis in Upper Egypt but memorials were built everywhere and he was universally revered in every part of the nation.[9
Anubis (/əˈnjuːbɪs/ ⓘ;[3] Ancient Greek: Ἄνουβις), also known as Inpu, Inpw, Jnpw, or Anpu in Ancient Egyptian (Coptic: ⲁⲛⲟⲩⲡ, romanized: Anoup), is the god of funerary rites, protector of graves, and guide to the underworld in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head.[4]
| Anubis | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 The Egyptian god Anubis,(a modern rendition inspired by New Kingdom tomb paintings) | ||||||
| Name in hieroglyphs |
| |||||
| Major cult center | Lycopolis, Cynopolis | |||||
| Symbol | Mummy gauze, fetish, jackal, flail | |||||
| Genealogy | ||||||
| Parents | Nephthys and Osiris (Middle and New kingdom), or Ra (Old kingdom), or Set (disputed)[1] | |||||
| Siblings | Bata | |||||
| Consort | Anput, Nephthys[2] | |||||
| Offspring | Kebechet | |||||
| Equivalents | ||||||
| Greek | Hades or Hermes | |||||
Like many ancient Egyptian deities, Anubis assumed different roles in various contexts. Depicted as a protector of graves as early as the First Dynasty (c. 3100 – c. 2890 BC), Anubis was also an embalmer. By the Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BC) he was replaced by Osiris in his role as lord of the underworld. One of his prominent roles was as a god who ushered souls into the afterlife. He attended the weighing scale during the "Weighing of the Heart", in which it was determined whether a soul would be allowed to enter the realm of the dead. Anubis is one of the most frequently depicted and mentioned gods in the Egyptian pantheon; however, few major myths involved him.[5]
Anubis was depicted in black, a color that symbolized regeneration, life, the soil of the Nile River, and the discoloration of the corpse after embalming. Anubis is associated with Wepwawet, another Egyptian god portrayed with a dog's head or in canine form, but with grey or white fur. Historians assume that the two figures were eventually combined.[6] Anubis's female counterpart is Anput. His daughter is the serpent goddess Kebechet.
In Egypt's Early Dynastic period (c. 3100 – c. 2686 BC), Anubis was portrayed in full animal form, with a "jackal" head and body.[17] A jackal god, probably Anubis, is depicted in stone inscriptions from the reigns of Hor-Aha, Djer, and other pharaohs of the First Dynasty.[18] Since Predynastic Egypt, when the dead were buried in shallow graves, jackals had been strongly associated with cemeteries because they were scavengers that uncovered human bodies and ate their flesh.[19] In the spirit of "fighting like with like," a jackal was chosen to protect the dead, because "a common problem (and cause of concern) must have been the digging up of bodies, shortly after burial, by jackals and other wild dogs which lived on the margins of the cultivation."[20]
In the Old Kingdom, Anubis was the most important god of the dead. He was replaced in that role by Osiris during the Middle Kingdom (2000–1700 BC).[21] In the Roman era, which started in 30 BC, tomb paintings depict him holding the hand of deceased persons to guide them to Osiris.[22]
The parentage of Anubis varied between myths, times and sources. In early mythology, he was portrayed as a son of Ra.[23] In the Coffin Texts, which were written in the First Intermediate Period (c. 2181–2055 BC), Anubis is the son of either the cow goddess Hesat or the cat-headed Bastet.[24] Another tradition depicted him as the son of Ra and Nephthys.[23] More commonly, however, he is recognized as the offspring of Osiris and Isis. In later periods, particularly during the Ptolemaic era, Anubis was sometimes described as the son of Isis and Serapis, a Hellenized form of Osiris designed to appeal to Egypt's growing Greek population.[25] The Greek Plutarch (c. 40–120 AD) reported a tradition that Anubis was the illegitimate son of Nephthys and Osiris, but that he was adopted by Osiris's wife Isis:[26]
For when Isis found out that Osiris loved her sister and had relations with her in mistaking her sister for herself, and when she saw a proof of it in the form of a garland of clover that he had left to Nephthys – she was looking for a baby, because Nephthys abandoned it at once after it had been born for fear of Set; and when Isis found the baby helped by the dogs which with great difficulties lead her there, she raised him and he became her guard and ally by the name of Anubis.
George Hart sees this story as an "attempt to incorporate the independent deity Anubis into the Osirian pantheon."[24] An Egyptian papyrus from the Roman period (30–380 AD) simply called Anubis the "son of Isis."[24] In Nubia, Anubis was seen as the husband of his mother Nephthys.[2]
In the Ptolemaic period (350–30 BC), when Egypt became a Hellenistic kingdom ruled by Greek pharaohs, Anubis was merged with the Greek god Hermes, becoming Hermanubis.[27][28] The two gods were considered similar because they both guided souls to the afterlife.[29] The center of this cult was in uten-ha/Sa-ka/ Cynopolis, a place whose Greek name means "city of dogs." In Book XI of The Golden Ass by Apuleius, there is evidence that the worship of this god was continued in Rome through at least the 2nd century. Indeed, Hermanubis also appears in the alchemical and hermetical literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Although the Greeks and Romans typically scorned Egyptian animal-headed gods as bizarre and primitive (Anubis was mockingly called "Barker" by the Greeks), Anubis was sometimes associated with Sirius in the heavens and Cerberus and Hades in the underworld.[30] In his dialogues, Plato often has Socrates utter oaths "by the dog" (Greek: kai me ton kuna), "by the dog of Egypt", and "by the dog, the god of the Egyptians", both for emphasis and to appeal to Anubis as an arbiter of truth in the underworld.[31
The Egyptians believed that in the netherworld, the Duat, there were various gates, doors and pylons crossed every night by the solar boat (Atet) of the sun-god Ra and by the souls directed to the world of the dead.[3]
Ancient funerary texts provide many different descriptions of the afterlife gates. Sometimes more than 1,000 guardian deities are listed.[2] According to a more general view, every gate was guarded by a minor god who allowed access only to the souls capable of pronouncing the secret name of the god himself, as a sort of "password".[2] The walls of many Pharaonic tombs in the Valley of the Kings are decorated with the texts of the Book of Gates, which describes the twelve gates or pylons of the underworld: in spite of being imagined as architectural barriers to all intents and purposes, the gates were individually named as goddesses.[3] Chapter 144 of the Book of the Dead mentions seven gates, each with its own God, a Doorkeeper and a Herald: for example, the 7th gate is guarded by the god "Sharpest Of Them All", by the doorkeeper "Strident Of Voice" and by the herald "Rejector Of Rebels".[2]
Other funerary texts mention 21 "Secret Portals Of The Mansion Of Osiris In The Field Of Reeds" with their own names and epithets and protected by zoo-anthropomorfic deities often depicted crouched on the ground and holding large, threatening knives.[2] The names of these last accesses — still feminine — are from time to time disturbing as the 14th ("Mistress Of Anger – Dancing On Blood") or harmless as the 3rd ("Mistress Of The Altar"). The guardian-gods too were given names that inspired terror and, above all, evoked their fearful powers: for example "Swallower Of Sinners" and "Existing On Maggots" — even if some texts avoided directly indicating their names, adding these largely unnamed gate deities of the underworld to the group of Egyptian divinities known to scholars, but impossible to inventory.[2]
Gates described in the wall paintings of the Valley of the Kings
editAccording to the descriptions provided by the wall paintings in regal tombs of the Valley of the Kings, each gate or pylon consisted of three elements: a) a spitfire snake placed in front of the access, b) the gate itself, described both as a true architectural portal and as a goddess, c) and its guardian deities. The solar boat's travel through such gates can be described as follows.[1]
.jpg)
1st gate: Sia (deification of perception)[4] standing on the prow of the sun boat, invites a snake called "Desert-Protector" to unlock the gate to the arrival of Ra who, in the form of the god Atum (deification of the sunset sun[5]), observes his enemies being massacred.
2nd gate: the guardian god is called "Swallower Of Sinners" and his gate precedes a lake of fire.
3rd gate: its guardian snake is "Stinger" while the portal itself is the goddess "Mistress Of Food"; some jackals watch over the "Lake of Life" interdicted to the dead because it is the place where Ra draws his breath.
4th gate: some deities carry ropes to measure the extension of the netherworld fields — as well as, in the daily life of the Egyptians, the measurement of the fields was carried out for tax purposes; this is also where the four human ethnic groups (according to the Egyptians) were depicted: the "cattle of Ra", i.e. Egyptians themselves, Levantines, Libyans, and Nubians.
5th gate: this gate is the goddess "Lady Of Duration" while its guardian serpent is "Flame-Eyed"; this access is inhabited by the perfidious demon Apep — embodiment of evil and chaos (Isfet), bitter enemy of Ra[6] — here called "Evil Of Face". 20 deities manage to stem his devastating power by continuing to dissect it, while the heads of those he devoured emerge from his coils. The sun boat moves on and Ra leaves this dramatic region.
6th gate: Ra's boat approaches to seven jackal-headed poles with two enemies bound to each one, waiting to be beheaded.
7th gate: this gate is the goddess "Shining One" and beyond it there are 20 gods holding a rope ending in four whips, four falcon heads and four human heads. This is an enigmatic and barely understandable point.
8th gate: this access is inhabited by a flaming snake who burns up the enemies of Osiris.
9th gate: here stand Horus and Set on a hawk-headed lion.
10th gate: Apep appears again, but chained in order not to harm Ra in his transit.
11th gate: this gate is called "Mysterious Of Approaches" and is overseen by the cat-headed god Meeyuty (meow onomatopoeia).
12th gate: here stand the goddesses Isis and Nephthys in the form of snakes: the journey through the gates of the afterlife is finished and the sun rises on the world in the form of a sacred scarab (Khepri, deification of the morning sun[7]).
Gate deities depicted in the tomb of Nefertari (QV66)
Gatekeepers of Aaru, painting on the southern wall of the tomb of Sennedjem in Dayr al-Madīnah, Thebes, Egypt,c. 1775 BCE.
A crocodile-god guardian of the underworld — from the tomb (KV17) of Pharaoh Seti I.
The journey of the solar boat of Ra through the gates of the netherworld and its deities — from a 4th century BCE sarcophagus. Louvre, Paris.
The journey of Ra among the underworld deities — from the tomb of Pharaoh Merneptah (c. 1213–1203 BCE).
The 11th hour of the book Amduat.
_(Vall%C3%A9e_des_Rois,_Th%C3%A8bes_ouest)_-9.jpg)
.jpg)
Gates described in funerary papyri
editThe British Egyptologist George Hart thus outlined, in his Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses (1986), the evocative names of these deities and their positions in the netherworld as described in the funeral papyri known to scholars:[8]
Gods of the Seven Gates
edit| Gate | God | Title | Doorkeeper | Herald |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Upside Down Of Face – Manifold Of Forms" | "Secret Listener" | "Miserable Of Voice" | |
| 2 | "Stretched Out Of Forehead" | "Seqed (?) Faced" | "Glowing" | |
| 3 | "Eater Of The Foulness From His Hindquarters" | "Watchful Of Face" | "Curser" | |
| 4 | "Hostile Of Face – Loquacious" | "Perceptive" | "Great Of Face – Crocodile-Repeller" | |
| 5 | "Existing On Maggots" | "Ashbu" | "Hippopotamus Face – Furious Of Onslaught" | |
| 6 | "Raging Of Voice" | "Face-Eraser" | "Sharp Of Face" | |
| 7 | "Sharpest Of Them" | "Strident Of Voice" | "Rebuffing Insurgents" |
Deities of the Twenty-One Secret Portals of the Mansion of Osiris in the Field of Rushes
edit| Portal | Name of Portal as Goddess | Guardian God |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Mistress Of Trembling" | "Dreadful" |
| 2 | "Mistress Of The Sky" | "Born Of The Hindquarters" |
| 3 | "Mistress Of The Altar" | "Cleanser" |
| 4 | "Powerful Of Knives" | "Long-Horned Bull" |
| 5 | "Fiery One" | "Killer Of Opponents" |
| 6 | "Mistress Of Darkness" | "Destroyer" |
| 7 | "Veiler Of The Weary One (Osiris)" | "Ikenti" |
| 8 | "Lighter Of Flames – Extinguisher Of Heat" | "Protector Of His Body" |
| 9 | "Foremost" | "Fowler" |
| 10 | "Piercing Of Voice" or "High Of Double Doors" | "Great Embracer" |
| 11 | "Ceaseless In Knifing – Scorcher Of Rebels" | "Cook Of His Braziers" |
| 12 | "Invoked By Her Two Lands" | "Cat" |
| 13 | "She Above Whom Osiris (or: Isis, Ennead) Stretches His Arms" | "Destroyer Of The Robber" |
| 14 | "Mistress Of Anger – Dancing On Blood" | "Screecher" |
| 15 | "Great Of Valour" | "Vigilant Of Face" |
| 16 | "Dread" | "Clever In Bowing" |
| 17 | "Great On The Horizon" | "Spirit" |
| 18 | "Lover Of Heat" | "Anointed" |
| 19 | "She Who Foretells Mornings Throughout Her Lifespan – Possessor Of The Writings of Thoth" | nameless |
| 20 | "Dweller Within the Cavern Of Her Lord" | nameless |
| 21 | "Sharpener Of Flint To Speak For Her" | "Giraffe" ("Memy") |
Two 'gate spells'. On the top register, Ani and his wife face the 'seven gates of the House of Osiris'. Below, they encounter ten of the 21 'mysterious portals of the House of Osiris in the Field of Reeds'. All are guarded by unpleasant protectors.[9]
Book of the Dead of Hori: supernatural creatures guarding the netherworld. Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland.
Pharaoh Nectanebo I (c. 379–361 BCE) adoring underworld demons. The Archaeological Civic Museum (MCA) of Bologna.
No comments:
Post a Comment