Anubis In Popular Culture
Anubis represents the mysterious figure of death, judgement, and the Underworld. Because of his obvious personality, and character. he is a prominent figure in literature and film. In television, Anubis has been a popular figure as well, whether the genre of medium has been fantasy, science fiction, or horror, though Anubis seldom represents the manifestation of terror. However, a possible tie to Anubis is the black dog, that was once featured in European folklore that signaled the coming of death, or Death itself. Other stories feature instead a large black cat, such as a puma or black panther, although these animals were not indigenous to England or surrounding countries at the time.
An excellent example of Anubis in fiction is that where he is featured in the novel American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, in which Anubis is merely a black dog, in the company of Bast and a Mr. Ibis, the figure of Thoth, scribe and communicator to men from gods. Later in the novel, Anubis accompanies a soul into the Underworld to perform the ritual of the weighing of a man’s heart to the feather of truth, Ma’at. He also appears in other literature, such as the novel The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. In the novel, Anubis’ gates are opened to another dimension in a failed attempt to summon the old gods for assistance in driving the British occupants out of Egypt.
In the less than historically accurate series Stargate SG1, Anubis is an extremely powerful or most powerful, of the Goa’uld, a fictional species of parasitic aliens, that burrow into the brains of sentient beings, and take control. He was the show’s ultimate villain, which certainly is another notch in the headboard for all the negative attention the god Anubis has received since the time when the Greeks and Romans referred to Anubis as the “Barker.” He was also featured in the Canadian television series Beastmaster, as a recurring character now and then in different episodes. Anubis was featured in a Japanese Playstation games as well, titled “Zone of the Enders.” Anubis Cruger was the name of a character from one of the many Power Rangers spin-offs, although the god and the character were dissimilar, and doubtfully linked for little other than aesthetic purposes. Anubis appears in his own series comics, which were Marvel’s take on the ancient Egyptian god.