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.jpg 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.