archangelrayner:

Jackal-headed Anubis holds the ultimate judgment over the dead, measuring every heart against the weight of Truth.

Nephthys, wife of Set – the God of Darkness, desired a child, yet her husband was infertile, so Nephthys disguised herself as Isis, the wife of Set’s brother Osiris, and seduced him. From that union, Anubis was born. Osiris cared for Anubis as his own, but when Osiris was murdered by his evil brother, Set, Anubis embalmed his adopted father and mummified the corpse so he would not rot. This preservation passed down to the Faithful, for if it was good enough for the Gods, it was good enough for man.

None enter the abyss of the Underworld without first being tested by Anubis. When corpses are preserved, he is the embalmer. When time for judgment comes, he is the final arbiter. In his realm, he keeps legendary weighing scales. On one side, the massive weight of Ma’at – truth and order. On the other side, he places the heart of the deceased. Should the weight of Ma’at prove infinitely heavier than that of the heart, Anubis casts the soul deep into the darkness of the Underworld, where it is forgotten, never to be reborn.

Anubis has four common roles in Egyptian mythology.

Protector of tombs
In contrast to real jackals, Anubis was a protector of graves and cemeteries. Several epithets attached to his name in Egyptian texts and inscriptions referred to that role. Khenty-imentiu, which means “foremost of the westerners” and later became the name of a different jackal god, alluded to his protecting function because the dead were usually buried on the west bank of the Nile. He took other names in connection with his funerary role, such as “He who is upon his mountain” – keeping guard over tombs from above – and “Lord of the sacred land” , which designates him as a god of the desert necropolis.

Embalmer
As “He who is in the place of embalming”, Anubis was associated with mummification. He was also called “He who presides over the god’s pavilion” , in which “pavilion” could be refer either to the place where embalming was carried out, or the pharaoh’s burial chamber.

Weighing of the heart (to expand on the topic)
As the “Guardian of the Scales.” The critical scene depicting the weighing of the heart, in the Book of the Dead, shows Anubis performing a measurement that determined whether the person was worthy of entering the realm of the dead the underworld, also known as Duat .By weighing the heart of a deceased person against Ma’at or truth who was often represented as an ostrich feather, Anubis dictated the fate of souls. Souls heavier than a feather would be devoured by Ammit, and souls lighter than a feather would ascend to a heavenly existence.

Guide of souls
Anubis was often depicted as guiding individuals across the threshold from the world of the living to the afterlife. Though a similar role was sometimes performed by the cow-headed Hathor, Anubis was more commonly chosen to fulfill that function. Greek writers from the Roman period of Egyptian history designated that role as that of “psychopomp”, a Greek term meaning “guide of souls” that they used to refer to their own god Hermes, who also played that role in Greek religion. Funerary art from that period represents Anubis guiding either men or women dressed in Greek clothes into the presence of Osiris, who by then had long replaced Anubis as ruler of the underworld.