Wepwawet was worshipped before the stone pyramids rose, his image carved upon artefacts that predate the Narmer Palette, the earliest carved record of a unified Egypt. In those first centuries he was not merely a god but the very spirit of the pharaoh's power, a wolf-like presence that ran before the king like a scout clearing the path through desert and marsh alike. His name, wp-wꜢwt, means "Opener of the Ways," and the Egyptians understood this in every sense: he opened the way for armies to march to victory, he opened the way for the sun to rise each morning, he opened the way for the dead to reach the afterlife, and he opened the way for newborn children to enter the world. In Memphis he was called "Opener of the Body," a title that connected him to childbirth itself, and in the temples of Asyut, the city the Greeks later named Lycopolis, the Wolf-town, he was the beloved local god whose inscriptions declared him the protector of the city and its people.

The Pyramid Texts, the earliest religious writings ever carved, reveal Wepwawet's intimate connection to royalty. In the Pyramid of Unas, dating to around 2345 BCE, the king declares: "My face is that of Wepwawet," claiming the god's own visage as his own and asserting that the divine scout guides his every step. In Pyramid Text utterance 301, the rising sun itself is called upon as Wepwawet, and in later utterances he is given the title "Ra who has gone up from the horizon," identifying him with the sun god's daily resurrection. The Pyramid Texts also record his birth at the Peru-nu, the sacred shrine of Wadjet, the cobra goddess of Lower Egypt and one of the oldest deities of the delta, though an alternative tradition claims he emerged from a tamarisk bush, a tree whose twisted branches were associated with the threshold between worlds. This connection to Wadjet was politically significant, for Wepwawet had always been the standard of Upper Egypt, and by claiming birth in the heart of Lower Egypt he became a symbol of the unification of the Two Lands, the northern and southern kingdoms that the pharaohs ruled as one.

As a war god, Wepwawet was unmatched. He was depicted dressed as a soldier, carrying a mace and a bow, and an inscription from the Sinai peninsula records that Wepwawet "opens the way" to King Sekhemkhet's victory, a promise that the god would clear the path for the pharaoh's armies no matter how rugged the terrain. He accompanied the king on royal hunts, his keen senses tracking prey through the reeds, and he was given the epithet "the one with the sharp arrow who is more powerful than the gods," a boast that placed him above every other deity in matters of war and the chase. In royal and religious processions, his standard was always first, a jackal figure mounted upon the shedshed, a symbol of ascension, carried at the head of the column to open the way for the standards of the other gods that followed behind. During the New Kingdom, the procession of Wepwawet even preceded that of Osiris, the god of the dead and resurrection, initiating the mysteries of Osiris as the opening act of the greatest religious drama in Egypt.

Wepwawet's role as opener of the ways extended naturally into the realm of death. The Egyptians believed that the journey to the afterlife was fraught with danger, a passage through the Duat, the shadowy underworld where demons, serpents, and false doors threatened to trap the soul forever. Wepwawet guided the deceased through these perilous paths, clearing the way with his mace and his divine authority, and in the Book of the Dead and the Amduat, the Book of What Is in the Underworld, he appears as the faithful escort who ensures the dead reach the Hall of Judgment safely. He also assisted at the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, the ritual performed upon mummies and statues to restore the senses of the deceased, and some traditions credit him rather than Anubis or Ptah with devising this essential rite. At Abydos, the most sacred city of the dead, he was worshipped as Lord of the Necropolis, and when Osiris, the god of the dead and resurrection, rose to dominance and absorbed the older god Khentyamentiu, Wepwawet retained his own independent cult, his temple standing alongside those of the greater gods as a reminder that the oldest powers are never truly replaced.

The most enduring images of Wepwawet are found in the temple of Seti I at Abydos, the magnificent Nineteenth Dynasty complex built by the battle king who sought to restore the glory of Egypt after the religious revolution of Akhenaten. Here Wepwawet appears in procession, in battle, and in his role as divine guardian, his jackal head sometimes painted grey or white to distinguish him from Anubis, the black jackal god of embalming, though the Egyptians themselves may not have drawn such sharp distinctions between the two. Anubis was usually shown recumbent, lying down in the posture of a guardian at rest, while Wepwawet was always standing, alert and ready, his ears pricked and his eyes scanning the horizon. The Greeks who came to Egypt identified Wepwawet with their own god Apollo as a deity of archery and prophecy, and in the Roman period his cult continued at Asyut and Abydos until the old temples were finally closed. In modern times, his name was given to a tiny robot sent to explore the air shafts of the Great Pyramid, an echo of his ancient role as the one who opens the way into places no human has yet travelled.