ANUBIS

Anubis is an ancient and powerful Goa'uld. Legend tells that the temple at Dakara is the place where he rose from the dead, and long ago he had been banished by the System Lords, never to be allowed to return, for crimes unspeakable even to the Goa'uld. The System Lords tried to murder him, and believed him to be dead for at least a thousand years. However, Anubis had not died. He had discovered the mystery of ascension, perhaps through old research of the Ancients, and he journeyed to Kheb where he deceived Oma Desala and learned the path to a higher plane of existence. In doing so, he acquired access to the knowledge of the Ancients, and Oma was unable to return him to mortal form. The Others of the ascended race cast him out, but they did not send him back completely. He remained as a form of energy, existing in a state between mortal existence and ascension, forbidden to use any knowledge or power that he would not have gained as a Goa'uld, and the Others used their collective powers to prevent him from affecting events on a grand cosmic level.

Anubis began secretly consolidating his power, gaining access to previously unknown technologies, sowing discord among the System Lords, and exacting heavy losses as an unknown adversary. He rebuilt his army of warriors, including an army of Ninja Jaffa, and eventually Herak rose to the position of his First Prime. His Jaffa bear the tattoo of a jackal. Unable to halt his rise to power, the System Lords voted to allow him to reclaim his former rank, and he pledged to destroy Earth before rejoining the ranks of the System Lords, thus working outside the restrictions of the Protected Planets Treaty. To this end, he sent an artificial asteroid composed largely of naquadah on a collision course for Earth in an attempt to make Earth's destruction appear as a natural disaster. As other System Lords allied themselves with Anubis, Yu alone stood against his return. Osiris acted as his emissary at the summit of System Lords, and Zipacna was sent on his behalf to destroy the Tok'ra base on Revanna. Ba'al entered the service of Anubis and sent his forces to battle the armies of Yu, however his defeat at the hands of Yu left Ba'al in disgrace.

Although he defended only a small handful of planets, Anubis continued to gain access to advanced technologies previously unknown to the Goa'uld. He captured Thor and used a mind probe to download the knowledge of the Asgard into his mothership, however he was forced to abandon the ship, which crashed into the Pacific Ocean and was explained as a meteor impact. He acquired technology, perhaps once belonging to the Ancients, to create a weapon which used one stargate to destroy another, and he directed it against Earth, destroying the SGC stargate. His forces overran the Tok'ra base in the Risa System, and an Ashrak in his service was sent to the Alpha Site in an attempt to wipe out the Tok'ra and Rebel Jaffa as well as the Tauri.

Even as Anubis consolidated his position, Yu began rallying the System Lords against him. However, following an ancient legend, Anubis collected the six artifacts known as the Eyes, including the Eyes of Apophis, Osiris, Tiamat, and Ra. Used in combination, their power is increased tenfold, and with this power Anubis destroyed Abydos and defeated the collective forces of the System Lords under Yu's command. His victory left him in possession of a powerful superweapon that gave him clear superiority over the System Lords, and he began rapidly decimating the forces of the remaining Goa'uld. By targeting the ventilation shaft of Anubis's mothership, SG-1 succeeded in neutralizing Anubis's superweapon before he was able to achieve galactic domination. However, Anubis captured Jonas, and by once again using the mind probe, he gained all of Jonas's knowledge of his homeworld and the SGC. Anubis then turned his attention to Kelowna and invaded the planet searching for naquadria technology. With Yu's mental competence failing, Ba'al took command of the United Alliance of the System Lords and led their combined forces against Anubis at Kelowna. However, Anubis escaped into hyperspace as his fleet was destroyed.

Anubis rebuilt his forces from his base on Tartarus where he used the Ancient knowledge of reanimation technology and Jonas's memories of Egeria to give rise to an army of Kull Warriors, synthetically created Goa'uld drone soldiers. With his vast new army he launched attacks against rival Goa'uld, including Ramius, Tilgath, and Olokun, absorbing their troops and resources in preparation for battle with Ba'al and the System Lords, and he sent Kull Warriors to Earth's new Alpha Site in search of the prototype weapon that offered the one chance of defeating his warriors. With his dominance assured, Anubis gathered the full force of his fleet and sent more than 30 motherships into Earth's orbit. Over 2000 American servicemen and women were killed in the attack that would later be explained to the public as a meteor shower, as Anubis systematically began targeting the Nimitz naval battle group in the Pacific, as well as global communication satellites, and the stargate itself. As the battle raged, O'Neill drew upon the knowledge of the Ancients from the repository on P3X-439, and activated the Ancient defense weapons which swarmed into orbit and annihilated Anubis and his fleet in a devastating battle over Antarctica.

Anubis was presumed destroyed, and his defeat created an unstable vacuum among the System Lords which Ba'al stepped in to fill. However, Anubis had not been eliminated. Since being cast down by the Others, he had existed purely as an immaterial being hidden behind a black mask which acted as a force shield designed to contain his essence, but in the battle over Antarctica, that essence was released, and Anubis was trapped in Earth's orbit, inhabiting debris from his ship. From orbit he entered the International Space Station, inhabiting the body of Russian cosmonaut Anatole Konstantinov, and upon his return to Earth he inhabited the body of Russian Colonel Alexi Vaselov, who was sent on assignment to the SGC. Unable to use his Ancient powers without drawing the wrath of the Others, Anubis needed a physical body to escape through the stargate and to rebuild a force shield to contain his essence once more. At the SGC he entered Daniel, Lieutenant Evans, Malcolm McCaffrey, Carter, and O'Neill before reentering Colonel Vaselov. His escape through the stargate was thwarted when Carter changed the dialing sequence, sending him instead to KS7-535, a barren ice planet.

Anubis was believed to be dead, however he escaped the frozen world and went into hiding where he secretly reestablished his powerbase. In an underground lab on P3X-584, Anubis created Khalek, a genetic hybrid, by replicating his own pre-ascension DNA using a DNA resequencer for genetic manipulation and combining it with human DNA. Khalek possessed the genetic memories of Anubis, but he was highly evolved with physiological similarities to the genetic characteristics of the pre-ascended Ancients. Whether Anubis's intention was to prepare a new host for himself or to create a race of servants more powerful than the Kull Warriors, his goal was to develop a human capable of ascension, however his experiments were abruptly stopped, and Khalek remained in stasis on the planet.

With Anubis's return, Ba'al secretly took service under his domain, and, using Anubis's resources, he achieved dominance over the System Lords, who were unaware that Anubis was the master he served. Anubis abandoned the badly disfigured host in whom he had escaped, and he took another human host. His knowledge of the Ancients had given him an understanding of the Ancient device on Dakara, and as part of his grand design, he seized the device with the intention of using it to destroy all life in the galaxy, then to repopulate the galaxy to his own specifications. In his non-corporeal form, he alone would have survived such devastation.

By remaining on a plane of existence between mortality and ascension, Anubis was also able to interact with Oma Desala and the Others who watched him at all times but took no action to stop him. There, on another plane of existence, Anubis also encountered Daniel, to whom he revealed himself in the person of "Jim." Before the Ancient device on Dakara could be unleashed, Oma Desala made the choice at last to intervene. Although she knew that Anubis could not be killed, she prevented the destruction of the galaxy by choosing to fight him, forcing him to remain locked in a struggle for all eternity. As their glowing energies joined as one, and faded away, Anubis's human form on Dakara also vanished, his forces were easily defeated, and the galaxy was spared.

Portrayed by: David Palffy, Dean Aylesworth, Rik Kiviaho

Cross Reference: Abydonians, Abydos, Adara System, Ancients, Ancient Defense Weapon, Anubis's Ancient Weapon, Anubis's Superweapon, Ascension, Ashrak, Asteroid, Ba'al, Dakara, Dakara Weapon, DEFCON, DNA Resequencer, Lieutenant Evans, Eye of Ra, Eye of Tiamat, Force Field, Goa'uld, Hassara System, Herak, Daniel Jackson, Jim, Kelowna, Khalek, Kheb, Khonsu, Anatole Konstantinov, KS7-535, Kull Warrior, Malcolm McCaffrey, Mind Probe, Ninja Jaffa, Oma Desala, Osiris, Others, P3X-584, Protected Planets Treaty, Jonas Quinn, Ramius, Rebel Jaffa, Revanna, System Lords, Tartarus, Thor, Thoth, Tilgath, United Alliance of the System Lords, Alexi Vaselov, Yu, Zipacna

Episode Reference: Revelations, Redemption, Full Circle, Fallen, Homecoming, Evolution, Lost City, Lockdown, Reckoning, Threads