The gate of the year

Marble statue representing the god Anubis, dating to the I-II century A.D., from Villa Doria Pamphilj, Rome, now in the Vatican Museums, Vatican City. The Egyptians represented the god Anubis in the form of a jackal or of a human with a jackal’s head. He was one of the oldest funerary deities and was regarded as the embalmer of gods and men. In the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods Anubis continued to be considered the “conductor or guide of souls” (in Greek psychopompós), taken on himself some of the characteristics of the Greek god Hermes, whose main attribute, the caduceus (a staff entwined by two serpents), is held by the statue in his left hand (Heerma Van Voss 2005).

[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/4629359262/#]




Human-Animal Transformation

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Marble statue representing the god Anubis, dating to the I-II century A.D., from Villa Doria Pamphilj, Rome, now in the Vatican Museums, Vatican City. The Egyptians represented the god Anubis in the form of a jackal or of a human with a jackal’s head. He was one of the oldest funerary deities and was regarded as the embalmer of gods and men. In the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods Anubis continued to be considered the “conductor or guide of souls” (in Greek psychopompós), taken on himself some of the characteristics of the Greek god Hermes, whose main attribute, the caduceus (a staff entwined by two serpents), is held by the statue in his left hand (Heerma Van Voss 2005). [Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/4629359262/#]