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 or father of the gods has little of the personal element in it. A consort Antum (or as some scholars prefer to read, Anatum) is assigned to him, on the theory that every deity must have a female associate, but Antum is a purely artificial product—a lifeless symbol playing even less of a part in what may be called the active pantheon than Anu.

ANUBIS (in Egyptian Anūp, written Īnpw in hieroglyphs), the name of one of the most important of the Egyptian gods. There were two types of canine divinities in Egypt, their leading representatives being respectively Anubis and Ophois (Wp-w ⹄ -wt, “opener of the ways”): the former type is symbolized by the recumbent animal, the other by a similar animal (in a stiff standing attitude), carried as an emblem on a standard in war or in religious processions. The former comprised two beneficent gods of the necropolis; the latter also were beneficent, but warlike, divinities. They thus corresponded, at any rate in some measure, respectively to the fiercer and milder aspects of the dog-tribe. In late days the Greeks report that  (dogs) were the sacred animals of Anubis while those of Ophois were  (wolves). The above figure is coloured black as befits a funerary and nocturnal animal: it is more attenuated than even a greyhound, but it has the bushy tail of the fox or the jackal. Probably these were the original genii of the necropolis, and in fact the same lean animal figured passant is s;b “jackal” or “fox.” The domestic dog would be brought into the sacred circle through the increased veneration for animals, and the more pronounced view in later times of Anubis as servant, messenger and custodian of the gods.

Anubis was the principal god in the capitals of the XVIIth and XVIIIth nomes of Upper Egypt, and secondary god in the XIIIth and probably in the XIIth nome; but his cult was universal. To begin with, he was the god of the dead, of the cemetery, of all supplies for the dead, and therefore of embalming when that became customary. In very early inscriptions the funerary prayers in the tombs are addressed to him almost exclusively, and he always took a leading place in them. In the scene of the weighing of the soul before Osiris, dating from the New-kingdom onwards, Anubis attends to the balance while Thoth registers the result. Anubis was believed to have been the embalmer of Osiris: the mummy of Osiris, or of the deceased, on a bier, tended by this god, is a very common subject on funerary tablets of the late periods. Anubis came to be considered especially the attendant of the gods and conductor of the dead, and hence was commonly identified with Hermes (cf. the name Hermanubis); but the rôle of Hermes as the god of eloquence, inventor of arts and recorder of the gods was taken by Thoth. In those days Anubis was considered to be son of Osiris by Nephthys; earlier perhaps he was son of Rē, the sun-god. In the 2nd century his aid was “compelled” by the magicians and necromancers to fetch the gods and entertain them with food (especially in the ceremony of gazing into the bowl of oil), and he is invoked by them sometimes as the “Good Ox-herd.” The cult of Anubis must at all times have been very popular in Egypt, and, belonging to the Isis and Serapis cycle, was introduced into Greece and Rome.

ANURADHAPURA, a ruined city of Ceylon, famous for its ancient monuments. It is situated in the North-central province. Anuradhapura became the capital of Ceylon in the 5th century, and attained its highest magnificence about the commencement of the Christian era. In its prime it ranked beside Nineveh and Babylon in its colossal proportions—its four walls, each 16 m. long, enclosing an area of 256 sq. m.,—in the number of its inhabitants, and the splendour of its shrines and public edifices. It suffered much during the earlier Tamil invasions, and was finally deserted as a royal residence in 769. It fell completely into decay, and it is only of recent years that the jungle has been cleared away, the ruins laid bare, and some measure of prosperity brought back to the surrounding country by the restoration of hundreds of village tanks. The ruins consist of three classes of buildings, dagobas, monastic buildings, and pokunas. The dagobas are bell-shaped masses of masonry, varying from a few feet to over 1100 in circumference. Some of them contain enough masonry to build a town for twenty-five thousand inhabitants. Remains of the monastic buildings are to be found in every direction in the shape of raised stone platforms, foundations and stone pillars. The most famous is the Brazen Palace erected by King Datagamana about 164 The pokunas are bathing-tanks or tanks for the supply of drinking-water, which are scattered everywhere through the jungle. The city also contains a sacred Bo-tree, which is said to date back to the year 245 The railway was extended from Matale to Anuradhapura in 1905. Population: town, 3672; province, 79,110.

ANVIL (from Anglo-Saxon anfilt or onfilti, either that on which something is “welded” or “folded,” cf. German falzen, to fold, or connected with other Teutonic forms of the word, cf. German amboss, in which case the final syllable is from “beat,” and the meaning is “that on which something is beaten”), a mass of iron on which material is supported while being shaped under the hammer (see ). The common blacksmith’s anvil is made of wrought iron, often in America of cast iron, with a smooth working face of hardened steel. It has at one end a projecting conical beak or bick for use in hammering curved pieces of metal; occasionally the other end is also provided with a bick, which is then partly rectangular in section. There is also a square hole in the face, into which tools, such as the anvil-cutter or chisel, can be dropped, cutting edge uppermost. For power hammers the anvil proper is supported on an anvil block which is of great massiveness, sometimes weighing over 200 tons for a 12-ton hammer, and this again rests on a strong foundation of timber and masonry or concrete. In anatomy the term anvil is applied to one of the bones of the middle ear, the incus, which is articulated with the malleus.

ANVILLE, JEAN BAPTISTE BOURGUIGNON D’ (1697–1782), perhaps the greatest geographical author of the 18th century, was born at Paris on the 11th of July 1697. His passion for geographical research displayed itself from early years: at the age of twelve he was already amusing himself by drawing maps for Latin authors. Later, his friendship with the antiquarian, Abbé Longuerue, greatly aided his studies. His first serious map, that of Ancient Greece, was published when he was fifteen, and at the age of twenty-two he was appointed one of the king’s geographers, and began to attract the attention of the first authorities. D’Anville’s studies embraced everything of geographical nature in the world’s literature, as far as he could master it: for this purpose he not only searched ancient and modern historians, travellers and narrators of every description, but also poets, orators and philosophers. One of his cherished objects was to reform geography by putting an end to the blind copying of older maps, by testing the commonly accepted positions of places through a rigorous examination of all the descriptive authority, and by excluding from cartography every name inadequately supported. Vast spaces, which had before been covered with countries and cities, were thus suddenly reduced almost to a blank.

D’Anville was at first employed in the humbler task of illustrating by maps the works of different travellers, such as Marchais, Charlevoix, Labat and Duhalde. For the history of China by the last-named writer he was employed to make an atlas, which was published separately at the Hague in 1737. In 1735 and 1736 he brought out two treatises on the figure of the earth; but these attempts to solve geometrical problems by literary material were, to a great extent, refuted by Maupertuis’ measurements of a degree within the polar circle. D’Anville’s historical method was more successful in his 1743 map of Italy, which first indicated numerous errors in the mapping of that country, and was accompanied by a valuable memoir (a novelty in such work), showing