The Poppy Garden

While doing an image search for jackals for some artwork I will eventually do, I came across this picture of a jackal trying to steal a morsel from a male lion, which my mind immediately captioned, in a nature show announcer voice, "The black backed jackal is easily identified by its giant balls..." It also gives a good idea of how big jackals aren't. Though they can waste a meerkat no problem, they are dwarfed by other scavenging animals like hyenas and vultures. To be fair, the black backed jackal is not found in Egypt, being more common in eastern and southern Africa. The common jackal there, and also in places like Iraq, is the golden jackal, seen below, which is slightly bigger, which means that they might just tower over the vultures, and not the other way around.

And of course the reason I like the jackals and blog about them, besides the funny photo caption, is that jackals are identified with canine netjer like Yinepu (Greek Anubis) and Wepwawet. Though one book I have actually notes differences in canine depictions of Yinepu and jackal anatomy. It refers to the "Anubis animal" because Yinepu's fully canine form seems to be a hybridization of several canines, bearing the most resemblance to a jackal. This makes sense from a magical perspective; remember that in Egypt, the way to fight a type of being or energy is with the same type of being or energy - Set is chaotic violence to turn back the chaotic violence of Apep. Jackals and other canines scavenge corpses, so who better to guard the necropoli than a being embodying characteristics of the most common scavengers. Yinepu most commonly appears as a human with a jackal's head, more rarely as a crouching black jackal, and least commonly as fully human. Wepwawet, a similar but distinct jackal god appears most commonly as a standing grey jackal, and is very old. You can actually tell the difference in iconography between the two by the fact that Wepwawet usually stands. You may have noticed if you clicked the link that the golden jackal is also not black, as Yinepu is usually portrayed. This again is magical, jackals may not be black, but mummies are, and Yinepu protects mummies. Wepwawet is usually grey, to me, closer to the appearance of Egyptian jackals.

And they were apparently a persistent problem. Khufu's mother, Queen Hetepheres, seems to have been buried twice, we found her second burial in the 1920s, which contains her jewelry, golden eating and drinking vessels, gilded furniture, and canopic jars, containing her internal organs. Her body is absent, and because treasures like the 20 silver bracelets inlaid with jewels were untouched (remember, at the time, silver was far more precious than gold; only a queen would wear such items) one theory as to what happened to her body is that it was gotten to by scavengers such as jackals, and Khufu had her and her treasures reburied near the Great Pyramid. At least that's the theory I am most familiar with, there are several others.

Labels: sacredanimals