ANUBIS, a symbolical deity of the Egyptians, was regarded as the faithful companion of Osiris and of Isis. Temples and priests were consecrated to him, and his image was borne in all religious ceremonies. Cynopolis, [7:3:277]situated in the Lower Thebais, was built in honour of 'Anubis. The temple in which he was worshipped no longer exists. The priests celebrated his festivals there with great pomp, and consecrated the dog to him as his living representation. “Anubis,” says Strabo, “is the city of dogs, the capital of the Cynopolitan prefecture. These animals are fed there on sacred aliments, and religion has decreed them a worship.” An event, however, related by Plutarch, brought them into considerable discredit with the people. Cambyses having slain the god Apis, and thrown his body into a field, all animals respected it except the dogs, which alone ate of his flesh. This impiety diminished the popular veneration for them.

Cynopolis was not the only city which burned incense on the altars of Anubis. He had chapels in almost all the temples. On solemnities, his image always accompanied those of Isis and Osiris. Rome having adopted the ceremonies of Egypt, the emperor Commodus, to celebrate the Isiac feasts, shaved his head, and himself carried the god Anubis. The statue of this god was either of massive gold or gilt, as well as the attributes that accompanied him. Anubis signifies gilded. The denomination was mysterious; and the Egyptian priests, it would seem, had not given it without reason.

The signification of this emblematical deity is thus explained by Plutarch: “The circle which touches and separates the two hemispheres, and which is the cause of this division, receiving the name of horizon, is called Anubis. He is represented under the form of a dog, because that animal watches day and night.” St Clemens of Alexandria, who was well informed in the mystic theology of the Egyptians, favours this explication. The two dogs, says he (the two Anubis), are the symbols of two hemispheres which environ the terrestrial globe. He adds in another place,—others pretend that these animals, the faithful guardians of men, indicate the tropics, which guard the sun on the south and on the north like porters.

According to the former of these interpretations the priests, regarding Anubis as the horizon, gilded his statue, to mark that this circle, receiving the first rays of the sun, appears sparkling with brightness on his rising, and that at his setting he reflects his last rays upon the earth. They said, in their sacred fables, that Anubis was the son of Osiris, but illegitimate. In fact, he only gives to the earth a borrowed light, and cannot be esteemed, like Horus, as the father of the day, or as the legitimate offspring of Osiris. It may be added, that the visible horizon, turning with the sun, is his inseparable companion.

In the latter of these explications, where Anubis represents the tropics, he is also the faithful guardian of Isis and Osiris. In fact, the course of the sun and of the moon is contained between the circles wherein the solstices are performed. They neither deviate to the right nor left. These limits, assigned by the Author of nature, might, therefore, in hieroglyphic language, be represented by a divinity with the head of a dog, who seemed to oppose the passage on the side of the two poles. The other opinion, notwithstanding, seems more natural, and to be more analogous to the ideas of the priests.

Upon the whole, it is reasonable to imagine that Anubis at first was only a symbolical image, invented by astronomers to give a sensible expression of their discoveries; that afterwards the people, accustomed to see it in their temples, which were the depositories of science, adored it as a deity; and that the priests favoured their ignorance by connecting it with their religion. The worship of Anubis being introduced, that of the dog became his emblem. Almost all the gods of the Gentiles have originated in this manner.