Wepwawet
Egyptian · deity · old kingdom · deity
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: Anubis
Sources
- Reference treatments of Wepwawet, his standard, his offices and his relation to Anubis.