Cynocephaly in portrayals of Saint Christopher

Dog-headed gods were a well-known component of the Egyptian pantheon.  Some Greeks believed that dog-headed people lived in distant lands, and ancient maps sometimes display such creatures in unexplored regions.

But the Christian Saint Christopher is also depicted in this fashion.

Today the legend of St Christopher helping Christ cross the river has obscured the important canine detail: though the river fording is almost certainly a late addition. In the early Middle Ages the most famous thing about St Christopher was his dog’s head. Indeed, good St Chris is often portrayed thus in medieval manuscript and sculpture...

One possible explanation is that Christopher was the Egyptian god Anubis in disguise. This explanationm suffers from a fatal flaw, however: the two have absolutely nothing in common bar their dog head and some associations – vague in the case of Christopher - with Egypt.

The answer is, instead, almost certainly to be found in an early misunderstanding of some of the grains of fact in the Christopher legend... It appears that Christopher served the Empire in the Cohors III Valeria Marmaritarum. If the name of this unit is to be taken at face value then these soldiers were Marmaritae a tribal people dwelling to the south-west of Egypt, outside the Imperial borders...

But what is interesting is that the first surviving description of this corner of the world, in Herodotus no less, tells us that it was here that the dogheads lived. Early on in the tradition of St Christopher an author perhaps innocently made the connection that was then afterwards taken seriously by hagiological duffers...

From Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog, where there are additional details.