Ancient Egyptian bestiary: Jackals

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Jackals

Source: 'Ancient Egypt', Time-Life Books

Jackals, slender built relations of the dog, are opportunistic scavengers and night hunters of insects and small mammals, playing an important ecological part. One of their characteristics is their high pitched nocturnal howling.
Anubis, the god responsible for the preservation of the dead, is generally depicted with a jackal's or some other canine's head. He also supervises the weighing of the deceased's heart. Another instance of jackals populating the underworld is mentioned in the Book of Gates, where twelve jackal-headed deities guard the rectangular Sea of Life.
Khentamenti, First of the Westerners–i.e. of the denizens of the realm of the setting sun, the deceased–was the jackal or perhaps dog-headed god of the necropolis of Abydos. During the late First Intermediate Period he came to be identified with Osiris, Lord of the West. A Roman Period manual describes how a jackal ate part of the corpse of Osiris, but spat it out again:

Wepwawet hid the Mutilated One (i.e. Osiris) in the crypt of his house (i.e. temple) When Horus became aware of it he hurried [in order to free the way] for his father Osiris. The accomplices of the Evil One (i.e. Seth) had hurried to him (i.e. Wepwawet), (as) he (i.e. a jackal) had licked the liquid of putrification of the venerable mummy (i.e. Osiris) Therefore it is a jackal which is over his figure, he had spat out that which he had swallowed before. The venerable shape was put together again and the efflux of the god kept safe, [after he (i.e. the jackal)] had mutilated the relic of his (i.e. Horus') father Osiris.
F. Feder (ed.), Mythological Manual for the Upper Egyptian nomes 7-16
After a transliteration and German translation on the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae website: Altägyptisches Wörterbuch, Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschafte => späte Ritualbücher => Tempelbibliotheken => Bibliothek des Sobektempels von Tebtynis => pFlorenz PSI inv. I 72 => Mythologisches Handbuch für die oberägyptischen Gaue 7-16

In New Kingdom tombs a brick decorated with a jackal was inserted in the eastern wall connected with the Horus son Duamutef (Each of the other three walls also had a symbol: to the west a djed pillar, a torch to the south and an ushebti to the north).
Upuaut was another god in canine shape, thought to have been a jackal or a wolf.