ANUBIS

also called Anpu ancient Egyptian god of the dead, represented by a jackal or the figure of a man with the head of a jackal. In the Early Dynastic period and the Old Kingdom, he enjoyed a preeminent (though not exclusive) position as lord of the dead but was later overshadowed by Osiris. His particular concern was with the funerary cult and the care of the dead: hence he was reputed to be the inventor of embalming, an art he first employed on the corpse of Osiris. In his later role as the conductor of souls, he was sometimes identified by the Greco-Roman world with the Greek Hermes in the composite deity Hermanubis.