hathor, sky goddess,-- protector of the sun at night. the jackal anubis, guardian of the body, its divine embalmer and protector. the versatile isis, goddess of fertility, patroness of magic and healing and queen of the sky. thoth, a lunar god often represented as a baboon... an ibis... or an ibis-headed human... patron of knowledge and writing, and protector of the scribes. great and small, the gods took different forms-- usually human or animal in shape, and often both-- all of them familiar to the ancient egyptians. when we talk about the hundreds of egyptian gods, each and every one of those is a manifestation of something they associate with the notion of deity or god. for example, the crocodile god, whose name is sobek. the egyptians did not worship crocodiles, they worshipped in this case the force that they associate with the crocodile, who is one of the most fearsome and powerful enemies that they have in their world. so they want to control that particular essence, and they turn it into a deity that they can worship and offer t