Wepwawet

Wepwawet goes first. That is the whole of him and it is a serious office: his standard leads the king's procession, his name is invoked ahead of an army, and he opens the road for the dead through the Duat. He is older than Anubis in the royal iconography and he is drawn differently — standing upright on a pole, where Anubis lies down on a shrine — but the two are close enough that Anubis eventually absorbed the embalming table, the scales, the jackal-headed man and the public recognition. Most people who see an upright Egyptian jackal today call it Anubis. It is usually this god.

Domains

• roads
• war

Powers

• to go first and make the road passable, in a procession or in the underworld

Relations

• counterpart of: AnubisNot the same god, although almost everyone now reads the upright jackal as Anubis. Wepwawet stands; Anubis lies down. Anubis took over the embalming, the scales and the visual identity, and Wepwawet was reduced to a brother, then to a name people mistake on sight.Reference treatment of Wepwawet and Anubis, on their distinct iconography — Wepwawet upright on a standard, Anubis usually recumbent — and on Anubis's absorption of his funerary role. (secondary)

Sources

• Wepwawet, 'Opener of the Ways', is an Egyptian canid god of funerary rites, war and royalty, shown upright on a standard and carried first in processions, with his cult centre at Asyut.: Reference treatments of Wepwawet, his standard, his offices and his relation to Anubis. (secondary)