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.
2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze statuette encrusted
with gold, in the Gîzeh Museum. The seat is alabaster,
and of modern manufacture.