Early Christians were repulsed by Anubis and outlawed mummification. The writer Tertillian claimed that the Egyptians practiced a “despicable religion” in which the worshiper is “led like a slave by the greedy throat and filthy habits of a dog.” It seems odd that Anubis should be scorned this way. It is true that his two emblematic creatures, the jackal and the dog, were in the ancient world notorious scavengers.

But one of the main functions of Anubis was to release the human body at death from the uncleanness that possessed it. He washed the body, embalmed it, and perfumed it with myrrh. He wrapped it with clean linen and received it at the door of the tomb – to the Egyptians Anubis was “Lord of the Cleansing Room.” As the ancient Greeks and Christians did not embalm the bodies of their dead (and to them death itself was considered to be a mysterious and terrifying thing), they unfairly associated the holy Anubis with disease and decay.