[5] Anubis was depicted in black, a color that symbolized regeneration, life, the soil of the Nile River, and the discoloration of the corpse after embalming.

Anubis is associated with Wepwawet, another Egyptian god portrayed with a dog's head or in canine form, but with grey or white fur.

"[9] The positions that he had were also reflected in the titles he held such as "He Who Is upon His Mountain," "Lord of the Sacred Land," "Foremost of the Westerners," and "He Who Is in the Place of Embalming.

In Egypt's Early Dynastic period (c. 3100 – c. 2686 BC), Anubis was portrayed in full animal form, with a "jackal" head and body.

[17] A jackal god, probably Anubis, is depicted in stone inscriptions from the reigns of Hor-Aha, Djer, and other pharaohs of the First Dynasty.

[18] Since Predynastic Egypt, when the dead were buried in shallow graves, jackals had been strongly associated with cemeteries because they were scavengers which uncovered human bodies and ate their flesh.

[21] In the Roman era, which started in 30 BC, tomb paintings depict him holding the hand of deceased persons to guide them to Osiris.

[23] In the Coffin Texts, which were written in the First Intermediate Period (c. 2181–2055 BC), Anubis is the son of either the cow goddess Hesat or the cat-headed Bastet.

[25] The Greek Plutarch (c. 40–120 AD) reported a tradition that Anubis was the illegitimate son of Nephthys and Osiris, but that he was adopted by Osiris's wife Isis:[26] For when Isis found out that Osiris loved her sister and had relations with her in mistaking her sister for herself, and when she saw a proof of it in the form of a garland of clover that he had left to Nephthys – she was looking for a baby, because Nephthys abandoned it at once after it had been born for fear of Set; and when Isis found the baby helped by the dogs which with great difficulties lead her there, she raised him and he became her guard and ally by the name of Anubis.George Hart sees this story as an "attempt to incorporate the independent deity Anubis into the Osirian pantheon.

With this connection, Anubis became the patron god of embalmers; during the rites of mummification, illustrations from the Book of the Dead often show a wolf-mask-wearing priest supporting the upright mummy.

Khenty-Amentiu, which means "foremost of the westerners" and was also the name of a different canine funerary god, alluded to his protecting function because the dead were usually buried on the west bank of the Nile.

[34] He took other names in connection with his funerary role, such as tpy-ḏw.f (Tepy-djuef) "He who is upon his mountain" (i.e. keeping guard over tombs from above) and nb-t3-ḏsr (Neb-ta-djeser) "Lord of the sacred land", which designates him as a god of the desert necropolis.

[37] By the late pharaonic era (664–332 BC), Anubis was often depicted as guiding individuals across the threshold from the world of the living to the afterlife.

By weighing the heart of a deceased person against ma'at, who was often represented as an ostrich feather, Anubis dictated the fate of souls.

[10] One of his most popular representations is of him, with the body of a man and the head of a jackal with pointed ears, standing or kneeling, holding a gold scale while a heart of the soul is being weighed against Ma'at's white truth feather.

[47] The African jackal was the species depicted and the template of numerous Ancient Egyptian deities, including Anubis.

[49] In funerary contexts, Anubis is shown either attending to a deceased person's mummy or sitting atop a tomb protecting it.

New Kingdom tomb-seals also depict Anubis sitting atop the nine bows that symbolize his domination over the enemies of Egypt.