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
The Red Pyramid now in the underworld with their ghostly mother. As a gift, Osiris (hosted by the deceased Julius) helps Bast return to the mortal world. Carter and Sadie describe their plans to recruit other magicians to (illegally) study the path of the gods, while the former also resolves to seek out the real Zia Rashid. Minor Characters include Thoth the Egyptian god of knowledge, Anubis the Egyptian god of funerals, Iskandar former head of the House of Life, Michel Desjardins the new head of the House of Life. According to Riordan, the idea for "The Kane Chronicles" series came from his