eress, 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.
Nit of Sai's had taken for her husband Osiris of Mendes, and borne him a
lion's whelp, Ari-hos-nofir.[**]

* Maspero, _Etudes de Mythologie et d'Archeologie
Egyptiennes_, 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.

Hathor of Denderah had completed her household with Haroeris 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 Hathor playing upon the
sistrum and the _monait_. Moreover, _ahi, ahit_ 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 _monait_.

[Illustration: 142.jpg IMHOTPU. 2]

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

A triad containing two goddesses produced no legitimate offspring, and
was unsatisfactory to a people who regarded the lack of progeny as a
curse from heaven; one in which the presence of a son promised to
ensure the perpetuity of the race was more in keeping with the idea of a
blessed and prosperous family, as that of gods should be. Triads of
the former kind were therefore almost everywhere broken up into two new
triads, each containing a divine father, a divine mother, and a divine
son. Two fruitful households arose from the barren union of Thot
with Safkhitabui and Nahmauit: one composed of Thot, Safkhitabui, and
Harnubi, the golden sparrow-hawk;[***] into the other Nahmauit and her
nursling Nofirhoru entered.

*** This somewhat rare triad, noted by Wilkinson, is
sculptured on the wall of a chamber in the Turah quarries.

[Illustration: 143.j