In ancient Egyptian religion, the jackal was most commonly associated with Anubis’s living form. Egyptian art usually depicts him as a black canine or as a human with a black canine head, although the precise animal is not always zoologically identifiable.
Jackals were seen near desert cemeteries, where shallow graves could be vulnerable to scavengers. Associating a powerful cemetery animal with Anubis expressed both danger and protection. The god was imagined as controlling the forces that threatened the dead rather than simply representing a wild animal.
Modern descriptions often call Anubis a jackal-headed god, but some scholars use the broader term canine because ancient artists did not always distinguish jackals from similar wild dogs. This is why “black canine” can be more precise for some artistic representations.