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
Creature type (Dungeons & Dragons) animals despite their real-world bases being more closely related to vermin type creatures. Creatures deemed inconsequential by DMs or designers are not given any creature type at all, instead being treated as "set dressing" unless a specific game effect targets such non-creatures. Examples include actual-sized spiders, sparrows, fleas, worms, shellfish, and mice. "Swarm" type creatures are occasionally written to represent such otherwise nonthreatening creatures if they were to group together by some force of magic within the game world. Under the rules of D&D, animal type creatures do not have an Intelligence score higher than 2. When a designer makes