The four couples who had helped Atûmû were identified with the four auxiliary gods of Thot, and changed the council of Five into a Great Hermopolitan Ennead, but at the cost of strange metamorphoses. However artificially they had been grouped about Atûmû, they had all preserved such distinctive characteristics as prevented their being confounded one with another. When the universe which they had helped to build up was finally seen to be the result of various operations demanding a considerable manifestation of physical energy, each god was required to preserve the individuality necessary for the production of such effects as were expected of him. They could not have existed and carried on their work without conforming to the ordinary conditions of humanity; being born one of another, they were bound to have paired with living goddesses as capable of bringing forth their children as they were of begetting them. On the other hand, the four auxiliary gods of Hermopolis exercised but one means of action--the voice. Having themselves come forth from the master's mouth, it was by voice that they created and perpetuated the world. Apparently they could have done without goddesses had marriage not been imposed upon them by their identification with the corresponding gods of the Heliopolitan Ennead; at any rate, their wives had but a show of life, almost destitute of reality. As these four gods worked after the manner of their master, Thot, so they also bore his form and reigned along with him as so many baboons. When associated with the lord of Hermopolis, the eight divinities of Heliopolis assumed the character and the appearance of the four Hermopolitan gods in whom they were merged. They were often represented as eight baboons surrounding the supreme baboon, or as four pairs of gods and goddesses without either characteristic attributes or features; or, finally, as four pairs of gods and goddesses, the gods being, as far as we are able to judge, the couple Nû-Nûît answers to Shû-Tafnûît; Hahû-Hehît to Sibû and Nûîfc; Kakû-Kakît to Osiris and Isis; Ninû-Ninît to Sit and Nephthys. There was seldom any occasion to invoke them separately; they were addressed collectively as the Eight--_Khmûnû_--and it was on their account that Hermopolis was named _Khmûnû_, the City of the Eight. Ultimately they were deprived of the little individual life still left to them, and were fused into a single being to whom the texts refer as Khomninû, the god Eight.