pg NOFIRTUMU. 3]

3 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze statuette incrusted
with gold, in the Gizeh Museum.

The persons united with the old feudal divinities in order to form
triads were not all of the same class. Goddesses, especially, were made
to order, and might often be described as grammatical, so obvious is the
linguistic device to which they owe their being. From Ra, Amon, Horus,
Sobku, female Ras, Anions, Horuses, and Sobkus were derived, by the
addition of the regular feminine affix to the primitive masculine
names--Rait, Amonit, Horit, Sobkit.[*] In the same way, detached
cognomens of divine fathers were embodied in divine sons. Imhotpu, "he
who comes in peace," was merely one of the epithets of Phtah before he
became incarnate as the third member of the Memphite triad.[**] In other
cases, alliances were contracted between divinities of ancient stock,
but natives of different nomes, as in the case of Isis of Buto and the
Mendesian Osiris; of Haroeris of Edfu and Hathor of Denderah.

* Maspero, _Etudes de Mythologie et d'Archeologie
Egyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 7, 8, 256.

** Imhotpu, the Imouthes of the Greeks, and by them
identified with AEsculapius, was discovered by Salt, and his
name was first translated as _he who comes with offering_.
The translation, _he who comes in peace_, proposed by E. de
Rouge, is now universally adopted. Imhotpu did not take form
until the time of the New Empire; his great popularity at
Memphis and throughout Egypt dates from the Saite and Greek
periods.

In the same manner Sokhit of Letopolis and Bastit of Bubastis were
appropriated as wives to Phtah of Memphis, Nofirtumu being represented
as his son by both unions.[*] These improvised connections were
generally determined by considerations of vicinity; the gods of
conterminous principalities were married as the children of kings of two
adjoining kingdoms are married, to form or to consolidate relations,
and to establish bonds of kinship between rival powers whose unremitting
hostility would mean the swift ruin of entire peoples.

The system of triads, begun in primitive times and con-, tinned
unbrokenly up to the last days of Egyptian polytheism, far from in any
way lowering the prestige of the feudal gods, was rather the means
of enhancing it in the eyes of the multitude. Powerful lords as the
new-comers might be at home, it was only in the strength of