Before you see the treasures, you meet their guardian.
Imagine standing at the low doorway of a room deep inside Tutankhamun’s tomb. Beyond it are boxes, boats, and sacred figures, crowded together in the darkness. Immediately in front of you, a black jackal lies on a golden chest. His paws reach forward. His ears stand upright. His long tail drops behind him.
He looks remarkably comfortable for someone who has been keeping watch for more than three thousand years.
This is Anubis, guardian of the dead, resting on the shrine that bears his name. The gold mask may be the most familiar face of Tutankhamun’s burial, but this quiet animal at the doorway tells another part of the story: what it meant to protect a king when the people who buried him could no longer remain at his side.
The discovery that took years to unfold
In November 1922, Howard Carter’s excavation team uncovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. What followed was an extraordinary undertaking. Thousands of objects had to be recorded, photographed, and conserved before they could safely leave the rooms where they had spent centuries.
The discovery of the Anubis Shrine belongs to that slower story.
When the team entered the burial chamber in February 1923, they could look through an open doorway into a smaller room beyond. Carter called it the Store Room; it is usually known today as the Treasury. The jackal stood at its entrance, draped in linen, almost blocking the way.
For all the temptation of what lay behind him, the team had other work to finish. They closed the opening with wooden boards while they dealt with the burial chamber. Anubis would have to wait a little longer.
On 23 October 1926, Carter recorded the return to that room. Harry Burton began photographing its contents the following day. By 25 October, the team was taking the shrine apart sufficiently to pass it through the burial chamber, with Burton recording the stages. The figure and its shrine reached the laboratory on 27 October.
Those dates give the discovery a different rhythm. We tend to picture archaeology as the instant a doorway opens. Here, the real achievement also lay in the patience that followed: understanding how something was assembled, documenting its position, and finding a way to move it without losing what had survived.
A guardian facing the right way
Anubis faced out of the Treasury towards the burial chamber and the west. Carter understood the position as deliberate. From the doorway, the god watched over the room behind him and the king beyond it.
Behind the jackal stood the great canopic shrine, enclosing the equipment that held Tutankhamun’s preserved internal organs. Other objects filled the Treasury: model boats, chests, and shrines containing figures of gods and the king. It was a room arranged around the needs of a royal afterlife.
Anubis belonged here because his responsibilities were intimate ones. He was associated with embalming and the protection of the dead, helping safeguard the body through its transformation. Egyptian artists could show him with a human body and canine head, or entirely as an animal.
On this shrine, the animal form does much of the talking. There is no dramatic gesture. The head is raised, the ears are attentive, and the body is settled into a position it seems capable of holding indefinitely. Anyone who has watched a dog resting while listening to everything around it will recognise something in the pose.
For a burial intended to last forever, an enduring watchfulness was a powerful idea.
Why is the jackal black?
Black can feel ominous to a modern viewer, especially in a tomb. In Egyptian religious imagery, it also carried associations with renewal.
The Nile’s fertile dark soil gave a visible example of life emerging from the earth. After the flood, growth returned. Black could therefore suggest regeneration as well as death, an association especially meaningful in funerary art.
Anubis’s dark body belongs to that world of meanings. A museum catalogue can tell us that he was painted black. Understanding the symbolism helps us see why that colour mattered.
The effect is striking even before we know the history. Gold picks out the details of the head and neck against the dark silhouette. The eye finds the face first, then follows the long back, the paws, and the tail. The artist has made a still figure feel alert.
Look at the eyes. Then the claws.
From a distance, the shrine appears to be a bold arrangement of black and gold. Come closer, and the materials become more surprising.
The jackal was carved from wood. Gold leaf highlighted details including the inner ears, eyebrows, eye rims, and collar. Pale calcite and dark obsidian formed the eyes. The claws were silver.
That last detail is easy to miss. Someone gave careful attention to the smallest points at the ends of the paws, where a casual viewer might hardly think to look.
The figure also wore actual textiles and floral collars. We often meet ancient Egyptian sculpture as a bare object in a display case. Here, linen and flowers remind us that an image could be dressed and attended to. The surviving sculpture is only part of what the people arranging the burial originally saw.
Another small object rested between the front legs: an ivory writing palette bearing the name of Meritaten, a daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Its exact reason for being placed there is uncertain. It brings another royal name into this already crowded room, and reminds us how many questions can sit inside a single archaeological find.
A small temple beneath his paws
The chest beneath Anubis has the sloping form of a temple gateway, known as a pylon. Its wooden structure was covered with plaster and gold leaf. A sledge beneath it, fitted with long carrying poles, made the whole assembly portable.
Those poles have encouraged the suggestion that the shrine took part in Tutankhamun’s funeral procession before reaching its final position. The construction makes ceremonial carrying plausible, although we cannot reconstruct its exact journey from the surviving object alone.
Across the sides, repeated symbols give the surface a rhythm. The djed pillar expresses stability and is closely associated with Osiris. The tyet, or knot of Isis, carries protective meaning.
Once you recognise them, the decoration becomes easier to read. Stability. Protection. A divine guardian above. Each element contributes to the same wish: that what has been placed here should remain secure.
What was inside the shrine?
The chest opened into four smaller compartments and one larger space. Inside were ritual objects and jewellery, including items wrapped in linen.
Carter’s notes describe blue faience animal forelegs, small figures, a papyrus-shaped object, and pieces of resin among the contents. These are details that rarely make it into the familiar photograph of the shrine. Yet they help us understand the chest as a working part of a burial, filled with things that had religious purposes.
There were also signs of interference. Carter thought the smaller compartments had been searched for more valuable material. Tutankhamun’s tomb preserved an exceptional amount, but it had been entered in antiquity. Its survival should not be confused with a room in which nothing had ever been disturbed.
The king’s organs were kept separately in the canopic equipment nearby. If you would like to follow that part of the story, our guide to canopic jars looks more closely at their place in Egyptian burial traditions.
The words at the threshold
In front of the shrine, a small clay brick supported a reed torch. The brick bore a protective text, giving the doorway another kind of guardian.
In Carter’s translation, the speaker promises to keep the chamber safe from obstruction and repel a threatening presence. The text ends with a clear purpose: “I am for the protection of the deceased.”
It is a useful passage to remember when the conversation turns to pharaohs’ curses. Here we have an actual inscription from the threshold, concerned with defending the person buried inside.
Read alongside the jackal, it makes the arrangement wonderfully clear. Image, object, and written words work together. Anubis watches. The shrine shelters its contents. The text declares that this place, and its occupant, are to be protected.
A familiar animal, an extraordinary responsibility
One of the pleasures of looking at Egyptian art is the moment when something distant becomes recognisable.
We may need help understanding a royal name or a funerary text. A pair of raised ears is more immediate. We know what attention looks like. The sculptor used that familiar posture to give shape to an enormous responsibility: keeping a dead king safe.
Try looking at the shrine in that order. Begin with the animal. Notice the eyes and silver claws. Follow the repeated signs around the chest. Then imagine it back at the doorway, with linen around the figure and a room of sacred equipment behind it.
The details do not diminish its mystery. They give us more to look at.
From our collection in Calgary
That watchful silhouette is the inspiration for our Anubis Shrine Box.
Our contemporary replica is cast in stone in Egypt, then finished by hand in our Calgary studio with real 24k gold leaf. The black jackal rests above the decorated chest, while the gilding catches the details across its surface.
The lid lifts away to reveal a hollow interior for jewellery or keepsakes. At 39 × 34 × 21 cm, it has a substantial presence, whether you choose it for the craftsmanship, the history, or the guardian himself.
Knowing the original’s story gives those familiar paws and raised ears a little more meaning. There is a long history behind this particular way of keeping watch.
Take a closer look at our Anubis Shrine Box →
A few things you might be wondering
Getting to know the guardian.
When was the Anubis Shrine discovered?
The tomb was discovered in November 1922. The team first saw the Treasury and its shrine after entering the burial chamber in February 1923. Detailed work on the shrine followed in October 1926, when it was photographed, dismantled for removal, and taken to the laboratory.
Why was Anubis placed at the doorway?
Anubis was a protector of the dead and closely associated with embalming. At the Treasury entrance, he faced towards the burial chamber, keeping watch over a room filled with sacred equipment. Carter understood that position as part of the shrine’s protective purpose.
Was the original shrine a coffin?
No. It was a chest containing ritual objects and jewellery, topped by a protective image of Anubis. Tutankhamun’s body lay in nested coffins inside a stone sarcophagus in the burial chamber.
What was kept inside the chest?
The interior had four smaller compartments and one larger space. Carter recorded ritual objects and jewellery, including small figures, faience animal forelegs, and resin. The king’s preserved organs belonged to the separate canopic equipment nearby.
Was it made of solid gold?
The shrine and jackal were principally wooden. Gold leaf and paint provided much of their appearance, with other materials used for details such as the eyes and claws.
Why is Anubis shown in black?
Black carried associations with regeneration as well as death. The Nile’s fertile dark soil offered a familiar example of new life emerging from the earth. In a burial, that promise of renewal gave the colour particular meaning.
Is Anubis a jackal or a dog?
“Jackal” is the traditional description, while “canine” is a useful broader term. His artistic form is a religious image rather than a straightforward guide to identifying a modern animal species.
What do the symbols on the shrine mean?
Two repeated signs are the djed pillar and the tyet, or knot of Isis. The djed expresses stability and is associated with Osiris; the tyet carries protective meaning. They reinforce the guardian’s purpose through the decoration of the chest itself.
Why does the shrine have carrying poles?
The shrine sits on a sledge fitted with poles so that it could be carried. This has led to the suggestion that it took part in Tutankhamun’s funeral procession. Its construction supports ceremonial carrying, although the exact journey remains uncertain.
Where can you see the original today?
The Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza lists it in the Tutankhamun Galleries as Anubis on a Chest, GEM number 6. Older books and records may identify it by its Egyptian Museum number, JE 61444, or Carter’s excavation number, 261.
Bibliography
The discovery dates and excavation details above draw on Carter’s original records, alongside museum accounts of the objects and their religious setting.
- Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. Tutankhamun Spatial Archive: object 261. Catalogue identity, excavation records, and museum numbers.
- Carter, Howard. Fifth-season excavation journal, 1926–1927: 23–24 October, 25 October, and 27 October. Griffith Institute. Discovery sequence, photography, and removal.
- Carter, Howard. Fifth-season journal: Anubis’s position and adornment, Meritaten’s palette and the protective text, and examination of the contents. Griffith Institute.
- Grand Egyptian Museum. Anubis on a Chest, GEM 6. Construction, contents, and current collection.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Discovering Tutankhamun: The Photographs of Harry Burton. Excavation and the arrangement of the tomb.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Art of Ancient Egypt: A Resource for Educators. Anubis and the meanings of the djed and tyet signs.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art. An Egyptian Bestiary, 1995. Animal imagery and Anubis’s watchful pose.
- Global Egyptian Museum. Recumbent Anubis, Liverpool Museum, 1973.2.10. Black as a symbol of regeneration. British Museum. British Museum Magazine, Autumn 2020. Fertile Nile soil and renewal.
- Wikipedia. Anubis Shrine. Supplementary overview of materials, decoration, and proposed processional use; its older museum-location statement is superseded here by the Grand Egyptian Museum’s record.
Hero artwork: AI-assisted editorial illustration created for Son of the Pharaoh, inspired by the Anubis Shrine. It is an artistic interpretation, not a photograph or archaeological reconstruction. Product details and photograph: Son of the Pharaoh. The product photograph shows our modern replica. Sources consulted 22 October 2026.