King Tut closes, Anubis moves on, Denver rests a little easier

​After more than six months of residency at the Denver Art Museum and its accompanying marketing blitz, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs closed yesterday to head to its next destination in St. Paul, Minnesota, where it opens in February. Along with it, the 26-foot-tall statue of Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of death and physically imposing merchandising tie-in, is packing it in and moving along. And even though the reign of terror is finally over, we'll kind of miss that guy.

When Anubis appeared as a seeming cohort to the 32-foot-tall Blue Mustang of Death, which cemented own its legacy as the most METAL public art ever installed after it murdered its creator, it seemed like a really terrible omen. Then again, a giant, black, jackal-headed Egyptian god of death is not likely to seem like a good omen in any location, as Anubis proved by turning into a regular gadabout town during his stay here.

From DIA, he turned up at Dick's Sporting Goods Park, and then later at Invesco Field in an orange Broncos jersey, even though, being a giant jackal-headed God of death and all, his loyalty to the team seemed questionable. Also, if you're looking for something to put a cute jersey on, use your tiny dog. You do not want to play dress-up with the fucking jackal-headed god of death.

We predicted destruction and, to a lesser extent, pestilence.

Luckily for us, that did not come to pass. In fact, during Anubis's time here, nothing really came to pass all all -- nothing awful happened, no lives were wrecked, no humiliating series of Job-like trials occurred.

Well, unless you were the Republican gubernatorial campaign.