You would think that people would wear a jackal mask on Halloween,but they didn't celebrate Halloween in Ancient Egypt. In fact, this mask was only worn by priests. They wore the mask to honor one of their gods, Anubis. They honored him by wearing the mask during the opening of the mouth ceremony and during the mummification of the dead. My question is, wouldn't it be kind of hard to cut someone open and mummify them with a mask on? Well it could be!
OK, so maybe I lied in the title. Anubis isn't the judger of souls. Not anymore, that is. He was at one time but Osiris, an Egyptian god, took over that job. How, you ask? Well, after Osiris was chopped into 14 pieces, he was, I guess you could say, resurrected. Because of this, Osiris became the ruler of the underworld. This knocked Anubis out of the top ruler spot. I guess it turned out for the best, though because Anubis hasn't complained once according to my research.
You probably don't even know what the weighing of the heart ceremony is, do you? Well I'm not going to tell you because it's not my topic, but I will tell you this. In the weighing of the heart ceremony, the first thing Anubis does is lead the "recently deceased" toward a scale. Then he takes their heart and weighs it against the feather of TRUTH! Now keep in mind that this happens in the afterlife. If the heart is liter than the feather then they get to go on in their afterlife. If not, the Devourer will gobble up the heart and their afterlife is over.
Just in case you didn't know, Anubis is pretty important to the Egypitian afterlife. After all, he does play a key part in the weighing of the heart ceremony. Plus, he cares for the bodies of the dead. Anubis does this by guarding them in their tombs. So I guess you could say he's a bodyguard, too! That's a dangerous job,though. I guess it's a good thing he's a god!
Have you ever wondered if there was a god for mummification? Well there is! His name is Anubis. His main roles as god of mummification are to care for the bodies of the dead and weigh the heart against the feather of truth in the weighing of the heart ceremony. To most people this would be kind of creepy,but I think it would be pretty cool! I still don't think that you'd get an accurate reading weighing a heart against a feather, though. Now going back to the whole caring for the bodies of the dead thing, it seams kind of pointless to guard dead people. I mean they're dead! Talk about a waste of immortality.
