Anubis

Okay, time to wrap it up. (See, because he's the god of embalming and mummification?) Anubis is the deity charged with the task of guiding souls from the world of the living into the afterlife. As part of this journey, Anubis served as "Guardian of the Scales." The ancient Egyptian funerary text, "The Book of the Dead," depicts Anubis as he performs the rite of weighing the heart of the deceased in the Hall of Two Truths. This ritual involved placing the heart on one side of a golden scale, while a feather was placed on the opposite side. This feather represented the embodiment of the Ma'at, or "truth," and it was that feather which a person's deeds were weighed against. If the heart was heavier than the feather, then the soul was judged to have done more evil than good in life and was consumed by Ammit, the Devourer of the Dead. If the heart was lighter than the feather, the soul was ushered into the Kingdom of Osiris where it enjoyed the rewards of the afterlife. In addition to his important role in the conveyance of the dead and the judgment [of] their souls, Anubis is also known as the patron god of embalmers. In the Osiris legends, it is Anubis who embalmed the God of the Deceased and protected the body after Osiris was killed by his brother, Set. After Set assumed the form of a leopard, Anubis killed the evil beast and wore its skin as a warning to evildoers, thus becoming known as the Protector of Tombs and lord of the sacred desert necropolis. Anubis is a large fellow, so of course he uses the Mythic Legions "1.0" parts - no little elf body for him! According to info on the Figura Obscura website, Eric (Treadaway or Mayse? I couldn't say) decided to take this opportunity to redo the entire bare body from scratch, to tweak it at bring it up to the standards the Horsemen have for themselves today, though Anubis would have needed to be new sculpts regardless: he may not be wearing chainmail or armored plates, but there are bands sculpted around his ankles, wrists, and biceps, and the intricate, Egyptian-style piece that covers him from chest to waist certainly didn't come from any previous figures! At most, the pelvis and upper legs would have been reused, but instead are new examples of existing parts. The figure gets several recognizable pieces of Ancient Egyptian clothing as add-ons: there's a softgoods linen skirt with a posing wire in the outer hem, a loincloth piece plugged into the front of the waist to give the impression the armored corset-thing hangs all the way down, a wide belt with a winged frontispiece and a second strip hanging down in front of the legs, and finally, an ornate usekh collar hangs around the neck. The thing covering the back of the head is not a nemes headdess, but a wig: those segmented plaits and that coloration are consistent with how hair was depicted in ancient murals. Although we all think of Anubis as a jackal-headed god, he's really not: the wild canids that live around Egypt were considered to be a subtype of the golden jackal, but genetic researchers in 2015 found that they're actually a distinct species that's more cloesly related to wolves or coyotes. Meanwhile, primary sources from Ancient Greece are consistent in reporting him as a dog, despite the fact they absolutely had different words for "dog," "wolf," and "jackal" even then. So at least if we're wrong about what he is, we're part of a long, storied tradition of being wrong about what he is. The figure includes three heads: right out of the tray, he's got one with harsh angles, meant to look like a statue. The other two are more organic, like actual animals, and with those you have your choice of either angry or calm - you know, the mouth is either open or closed. So between those and the option to have either human or animal hands and feet, you can decide for yourself if this is an actual half-animal creature, or simply a man wearing a mask. Anyone who's ever seen a jackal can tell you they aren't actually black - Anubis was just given that color as a reference to the resin that got smeared on mummies to seal them. In Ancient Egypt, black was the color of fertility (because river silt), so this also gave him a sense of potential resurrection or rebirth. All three heads are a nice dark color, with blue eyes and golden eyebrows. His skin is brown, with the neck being used to fade between the two colors, and if you give him the optional dog feet and tail, they have similar gradiants. The armor and belt use dusty, muted reds and blues that suit an ancient being well. Articulation is mostly the same that you're used to. Anubis has a tail, so that's a little unusual, and it's bendy, as well. The ankle pegs go into the animal feet at an angle, so tose will only tilt instead of turning side to side. The decision to redo the 1.0 body has given us one new surprise: until now, all the bare chests have been solid from neck to head, not having the neck swivel all the other types of torsos have enjoyed. Anubis may have sculpted armor on his stomach, but the neck is bare, and yet there's a swivel where it could be swapped out for something else if you wanted. The set even includes an alternat neck. Why? No good reason, really. The two are functionally identical. The tendons stick out a little more on one of them than the other. Anubis' accessories include a handheld ankh and a tall green was-sceptre. The was is a stylized animal head on top of a very straight staff with a forked end. Because the Horsemen wanted this toy to feel like something you could get at a museum gift shop, it also includes a direct copy of the Anubis Shrine, an object found in the real-life tomb of Tutankhamun. He also gets a canopic jar with a jackal likeness on top (it's not Anubis, but Duamutef, one of Horus' sons, and would have stored the corpse's stomach) and Eye of Ra with a display stand to hold it upright (showing that they quickly learned their lesson from the Jacob Marley's door knocker problem). The page implied there would also be a necklace of one sort or another: the text says Wadjet Eye, the photo of accessories shows Falcon, but neither of them is here. Stay tuned for the Bastet review to see if it shows up there! But we do have to ask: if this is Anubis, why doesn't he come with the scales, and a heart and feather? Once again, we get the standard-style Figura Obscura packaging: a window box with a magnetic "book" wrap around the outside and that beautiful Nate Baertsch art all over. We've already discussed the exterior, but the box itself has statuary on the sides and a sort of mystical, dusky, spirit-realm kind of scene on the back. The insert behind the figure inside the box is a night scene, with energy beaming up from the pyramids to form the Eye of Horus, and the inside of the magnetic flap has a similar scene, but with a temple in the daylight and the Eye of Ra above it. Great backdrops for the figures! True oldheads will recall that this is technically not the first "Anubis" the Four Horsemen have made. But if you're going to make Egpytian god toys, he's almost a given: in the myths, Anubis was a very workmanlike deity, just quietly and reliably doing his job and not really getting involved in any of the big plots; but because he was the god of the dead, his likeness was present on pretty much every tomb modern archaeologists found; and so he's sort of become the default representation of the Egyptian pantheon. We might have chosen a few different accessories for him, but overall this is a wonderful toy. -- 06/01/24

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