Most of the feudal divinities began their lives in solitary grandeur, apart from, and often hostile to, their neighbours. Families were assigned to them later.[*]
* The existence of the Egyptian triads was discovered and defined by Champollion. These triads have long served as the basis upon which modern writers have sought to establish their systems of the Egyptian religion. Brugsch was the first who rightly attempted to replace the triad by the Ennead, in his book Religion und Mythologie der alten Ægypter. The process of forming local triads, as here set forth, was first pointed out by Maspero (_Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. 269, et seq.).
Each appropriated two companions and formed a trinity, or as it is generally called, a triad. But there were several kinds of triads. In nomes subject to a god, the local deity was frequently content with one wife and one son; but often he was united to two goddesses, who were at once his sisters and his wives according to the national custom.
Thus, Thot of Hermopolis possessed himself of a harem consisting of Seshaît-Safk-hîtâbûi and Hahmâûît. Tûmû divided the homage of the inhabitants of Helio-polis with Nebthôtpît and with Iûsasît. Khnûmû seduced and married the two fairies of the neighbouring cataract--Anûkît the constrainer, who compresses the Nile between its rocks at Philse and at Syene, and Satît the archeress, who shoots forth the current straight and swift as an arrow.[*] Where a goddess reigned over a nome, the triad was completed by two male deities, a divine consort and a divine son. Nît of Sai's had taken for her husband Osiris of Mendes, and borne him a lion's whelp, Ari-hos-nofir.[**]
* Maspero, _Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. 273, et seq.
** _Arihosnofir_ means _the lion whose gaze has a beneficent fascination_. He also goes under the name of _Tutu_, which seems as though it should be translated "_the bounding_,"--a mere epithet characterizing one gait of the lion-god's.
Hâthor of Denderah had completed her household with Haroêris and a younger Horus, with the epithet of Ahi--he who strikes the sistrum.[*]
* Brugsch explains the name of Ahi as meaning _he who causes his waters to rise_, and recognizes this personage as being, among other things, a form of the Nile. The interpretation offered by myself is borne out by the many scenes representing the child of Hâthor playing upon the sistrum and the _monâît_. Moreover, _ahi, ahît_ is an invariable title of the priests and priestesses whose office it is, during religious ceremonies, to strike the sistrum, and that other mystic musical instrument, the sounding whip called _monâît_.