What is archaeology, and what are some facts about Anubis, the ancient Egyptian deity of funerals, etc? Jaidyn (12)

Dear Jaidyn,

Archaeology is the study of past civilisations, although it is not just about ancient cultures: you also have industrial archaeology for example, which is much more recent. Archaeology is different from history however as it mostly concentrates on material culture: archaeologists work to excavate sites and recover artefacts and information in order to understand the past better. Historians have a similar mission although they concentrate on the written record… which has its limits as writing was introduced by the Romans in the UK (although there were oghams, an early alphabet that may have been used prior to the Roman invasion). Archaeology, because it consists of excavating sites, can go much further back and the oldest site to be discovered in the UK is Happisburgh in Norfolk where flint tools and human footprints were revealed, dating back to roughly 900,000 years ago!

Now, about Anubis… He is a very interesting Egyptian god associated with the afterlife and the dead. He is also known for having invented embalming, which was a very important practice in Ancient Egypt and he performed the first mummification on another god, Osiris. The most famous depictions of Anubis show him as a jackal, or a man with a jackal’s head. He was a very popular god in Ancient Egypt, but also in Greece where he was linked to the god Hermes, who also guided souls into the afterlife. My favourite fact about Anubis however is that he was weighing people’s hearts when they died, against the feather of truth, so that he could find out what they were worth in the afterlife!

Odile, December 2025