The Jackal on the Hill

Egyptian tradition gave Anubis the head of a jackal, and the reason is usually read straight off the landscape. Jackals scavenged the desert cemeteries at the edge of the towns, digging where the dead were laid. Rather than drive the animal off, Egypt made it the guardian: the shape that threatened the grave became the shape that kept it. His oldest titles put him there — he who is upon his mountain, lord of the sacred land — watching the cliff line above the tombs. In the Pyramid Texts he is already old, and already the one the dead are handed to.