As the sacerdotal colleges had adopted the Heliopolitan doctrine, so they now generally adopted that of Hermopolis: Amon, for instance, being made to preside indifferently over the eight baboons and over the four independent couples of the primitive Ennead. In both cases the process of adaptation was absolutely identical, and would have been attended by no difficulty whatever, had the divinities to whom it was applied only been without family; in that case, the one needful change for each city would have been that of a single name in the Heliopolitan list, thus leaving the number of the Ennead unaltered. But since these deities had been turned into triads they could no longer be primarily regarded as simple units, to be combined with the elements of some one or other of the Enneads without preliminary arrangement. The two companions whom each had chosen had to be adopted also, and the single Thot, or single Atumu, replaced by the three patrons of the nome, thus changing the traditional nine into eleven. Happily, the constitution of the triad lent itself to all these adaptations. We have seen that the father and the son became one and the same personage, whenever it was thought desirable. We also know that one of the two parents always so far predominated as almost to efface the other. Sometimes it was the goddess who disappeared behind her husband; sometimes it was the god whose existence merely served to account for the offspring of the goddess, and whose only title to his position consisted in the fact that he was her husband. Two personages thus closely connected were not long in blending into one, and were soon defined as being two faces, the masculine and feminine aspects of a single being. On the one hand, the father was one with the son, and on the other he was one with the mother. Hence the mother was one with the son as with the father, and the three gods of the triad were resolved into one god in three persons. [Illustration: 215.jpg THE THEBAN ENNEAD] 1 This Ennead consists of fourteen members--Montu, duplicating Atumu; the four usual couples; then Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, together with his associate deities, Hathor, Tanu, and Anit.