ANUBIS USHERING THE DEAD INTO THE PRESENCE OF OSIRIS. (After a colored facsimile of a picture in the Book of the Dead, by Pleyte.) The early Christians of Egypt identified Anubis with Christ on account of his relation to the preservation and resurrection of the dead. See page 66. Frontispiece to The Open Court. A MONTHLY MAGAZINE Devoted to the Science of Religion, the Religion of Science, and VOL. XV. (NO. 2.) FEBRUARY, 1901. Copyright by The Open Court Publishing Co., 1900. NO. 537 THE ANUBIS, SETH, AND CHRIST. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE "SPOTTCRUCIFIX." BY THE EDITOR. HE famous wall-scribbling with the donkey-headed deity attached to a cross which was discovered in one of the servants' ANUBIS WEIGHING THE HEART IN THE HALL OF JUDGMENT. From the Papyrus of Ani. (After Budge's colored facsimile.)1 rooms of the imperial household in Rome was discussed in The Open Court for November 1899. We recapitulated the current 1 Anubis adjusts the tongue of the balance, the construction of which is quite noteworthy. A feather, the emblem of truth and symbol of the goddess Maat, serves him for a weight. Ani's soul, opinions concerning it, among which two are most prominent, viz., first, the view of most Christian archæologists that it is the work of a pagan slave done in ridicule of a Christian fellow slave, hence the name Spottcrucifix by which it is commonly known, and secondly the view of Mr. King who believes it to be the expression of Gnostic piety, not drawn to ridicule any one's religion, but to express the author's own sentiments. He claims that the head is not the head of a donkey, but of a jackal, and that it represents the jackal-headed Anubis, attached to a cross. ANUBIS. We grant that Anubis was a Deity that played a most important part not only in the religion of ancient Egypt but also in the imagination of the early Christians of Egypt who identified him with Christ, on account of his relation to the preservation and THE MUMMY AT THE TOMB PROTECTED BY ANUBIS.1 resurrection of the dead. His picture frequently appears in the papyri (called The Book of the Dead) that accompanied the mummies into the tomb, or as the Egyptians called their last abode, pa t'etta, i. e., the everlasting house. Anubis is frequently represented as standing by the bier, sometimes with one hand on the mummy. He presides over the process of embalming and then ushers the dead into the presence of Osiris. He weighs the heart of the deceased in the Judgment Hall; and thus his assistance is, next to that of Osiris and of Horus, indispensable for obtaining the boon of resurrection of the body. in the shape of a human-headed hawk, watches the procedure. Underneath the left arm of the balance stands the genius of Ani's Destiny, above whose head appears a figure called meskhen, and described as a cubit with a human head. It is some representative of man's embryonic existence and the conditions of his birth. Further to the left are the two goddesses Renenet and Meskhenet who preside over the birth chamber and the nursery. 1 Wiedemann, Rel, of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 237. |