an auxiliary
title that they could enter a strange city, and then only on condition
of submitting to its religious law. Hathor, supreme at Denderah, shrank
into insignificance before Haroeris at Edfu, and there retained only the
somewhat subordinate part of a wife in the house of her husband.[**]

* Originally, Nofirtumu appears to have been the son of cat
or lioness-headed goddesses, Bastit and Sokhit, and from
them he may have inherited the lion's head with which he is
often represented. His name shows him to have been in the
first place an incarnation of Atumu, but he was affiliated
to the god Phtah of Memphis when that god became the husband
of his mothers, and preceded Imhotpu as the third personage
in the oldest Memphite triad.

** Each year, and at a certain time, the goddess came in
high state to spend a few days in the great temple of Edfu,
with her husband Haroeris.

On the other hand, Haroeris when at Denderah descended from the supreme
rank, and was nothing more than the almost useless consort of the lady
Hathor. His name came first in invocations of the triad because of his
position therein as husband and father; but this was simply a concession
to the propriety of etiquette, and even though named in second place,
Hathor was none the less the real chief of Denderah and of its divine
family.[*] Thus, the principal personage in any triad was always the
one who had been patron of the nome previous to the introduction of the
triad: in some places the father-god, and in others the mother-goddess.

* The part played by Haroeris at Denderah was so
inconsiderable that the triad containing him is not to be
found in the temple. "In all our four volumes of plates, the
triad is not once represented, and this is the more
remarkable since at Thebes, at Memphis, at Philse, at the
cataracts, at Elephantine, at Edfu, among all the data which
one looks to find in temples, the triad is most readily
distinguished by the visitor. But we must not therefore
conclude that there was no triad in this case. The triad of
Edfu consists of Hor-Hut, Hathor, and Hor-Sam-ta-ui. The
triad of Denderah contains Hathor, Hor-Hut, and Hor-Sam-ta-
ui. The difference is obvious. At Edfu, the male principle,
as represented by Hor-Hut, takes the first place, whereas
the first person at Denderah is Hathor, who represen