Anubis Warriors Charging — Print & Oil Painting

Everything in the frame is going the same way. The leading warrior has his right arm flung forward with the index finger extended, and that one line of pointing sets the direction for the whole picture: the hounds running along the bottom edge, the second rank of soldiers behind, even the drift of the dust.

He is jackal-headed, jaws wide, and the armour is confined to gold: a crested plate over the skull, a stiff collar at the throat, thick bands at both wrists and above one knee. The rest is dark hide. Held low and back in the left hand is a club studded with spikes.

Tonally this is unusually pale for a subject like this. Sand and bone-white fill most of the canvas, the sky is a wet grey-green, and the pyramids behind are barely more than a change of tone. Against that, the black bodies of the dogs at the lower edge read as holes cut through the picture.

Egyptian priests wore a canine mask during embalming rites, standing in for the god while the work was done, and a rank of jackal heads moving in step carries a faint echo of that practice. The painting makes no such claim of its own: this is an army, not a rite.

It hangs in our Egypt collection next to the standing colossus, where the same head is used for stillness rather than speed.