The Egyptians believed in the divinity of animals to a certain degree. Because animals speak in a different language, the Egyptians thought they were communicating with gods. For this reason, hey were held to be very special kind of beings unlike humans, who could not directly communicate with gods unless they had specially being trained as priests. Animals were born as gods' creatures and could automatically speak the secret language that gods could understand. So for the Egyptians in a way animals had much greater proximity to the divinity unlike the idea of many other religions today, where animals are regarded as lesser to human beings.
The Egyptians believed that in a sacred animal the spirit of the god would enter into the body of this animal and animate it. And so during the lifetime of the animal it would be like the god incarnate and people would pray to it, worship it in many ways and it would have oracular powers. So if one had a question or they wanted to foretell the future and even in some cases if there was a question of judgment about property or inheritance or whatever, people would, instead of going to a judge, go to the god at the temple and the ask god the question after which the priest would interpret the movement. So, if the animal such as the sacred Apis bull would be asked the question, he would move his head in a certain way or he would emit a sound and then the priest would interpret this and tell the people what they should do or how they should resolve any conflict they had.
The ancient Egyptians associated specific gods with specific animals. And so we have Sekhmet, for example, who is the goddess of strength, rage and plagues. Then we have gods such as Toth, who is the god of wisdom and writing whose main animal is an ibis. The sacred ibis has a long beak that bends down and looks like a pen and since Toth is the god of writing that makes sense. Horus is represented by a raptor. Now people generally say Horus is a hawk, but, actually, Horus is made up of composite of different hawks, he is a superhawk. So he has falcon's eyes, the plumage of the eagle and a large combination, because what Horus does like the Sun god, he flies up high, he has great eyesight and he can see things from far.
One of the most impressive gods in terms of size is Sobek. Sobek was a crocodile god and he is sometimes shown as a human being with the head of the crocodile, but quite often he is depicted as a crocodile himself. And crocodiles were used for Sobek, because Sobek is associated with the Sun and in a very particular way, because crocodiles can sit and bask for hours on a sandbank in the sun, but sometimes they plunge deep into the depth of the water and this is the idea of the sun going down to sleep at night and being resurrected in the daytime.
Although some of the ancient Egyptian animal cults started as early as the First Dynasty, if not before, the majority of animal worship was active in from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty on to the end of the Egyptian civilization on the advent of Christianity. So, if was from about 700 BC to nearly 400 AD that you have an intensively active animal cults system in Ancient Egypt.
Of course, some gods are more difficult to understand and that would be something like Seth. Seth is rather complex deity, because no one can quite figure out what animal he is. He looks like a combination of animals and perhaps he is a superweird animal. Clearly he is a sort of mythological, because he is a god of scary things, he is the god of the desert, he is the god of the unknown, he is the god of chaotic forces. And that's why he doesn't look like any one single animal that one can identify.
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