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 Anubis Gates travel, but none with "The Anubis Gates"<nowiki>'</nowiki> unique slant on the material, nor its bottomless well of inventiveness. It's literally in a class by itself, a model for others to follow... Powers draws from everywhere: speculative quantum physics, ancient Egyptian mythology, Romany lore, history and classical literature. Then he mixes it all together with the carefree exuberance of a kid with his first chemistry set. The result, of course, blows up the room — but in the best possible way." A guardian.co.uk reviewer called it "a torrential adventure which ranged from 19th-century poets to the gods of ancient Egypt... a