Ancient Egyptian deities purposes. Egyptian texts often refer to deities' true, underlying forms as "mysterious". The Egyptians' visual representations of their gods are therefore not literal. They symbolize specific aspects of each deity's character, functioning much like the ideograms in hieroglyphic writing. For this reason, the funerary god Anubis is commonly shown in Egyptian art as a dog or jackal, a creature whose scavenging habits threaten the preservation of buried mummies, in an effort to counter this threat and employ it for protection. His black coloring alludes to the color of mummified flesh and to the fertile black soil that Egyptians saw as
Anubis discoloration of the corpse after embalming. Anubis is associated with Wepwawet (also called Upuaut), another Egyptian god portrayed with a dog's head or in canine form, but with grey or white fur. Historians assume that the two figures were eventually combined. Anubis' female counterpart is Anput. His daughter is the serpent goddess Kebechet. Anubis' name "jnpw" was possibly pronounced [a.ˈna.pʰa], based on Coptic "Anoup" and the Akkadian transcription in the name <ri-a-na-pa> "Reanapa" that appears in Amarna letter EA 315. However, this transcription may also be interpreted as "rˁ-nfr", a name similar to that of Prince Ranefer of the Fourth