Anubis (Egyptian Inpu) is the black canine god who presides over death, embalming and the cemetery. His animal is usually identified as a jackal or a jackal-like desert dog, and the choice of animal is telling: such animals scavenged at the desert margins where Egyptians buried their dead, so the god who protected the corpse wears the shape of the very creature a family most feared would disturb it. His colour, black, is not the black of decay but of the fertile Nile silt and of resurrection, the colour of Osiris restored.
Anubis is the patron of mummification. Myth makes him the one who first embalmed Osiris, and so the inventor of the process that preserves the body for the afterlife. In the embalming workshop the presiding priest wore an Anubis mask, standing in for the god as he performed the rites over the dead; surviving masks and countless tomb images show the jackal-headed figure bending over the mummy on its lion-shaped bier.
He is also Khenty-seh-netjer, foremost of the divine booth, and guardian of the necropolis, the god invoked to keep tombs and their occupants safe.