te function, but
each of them felt himself endowed with faculties and armed with special
powers required by his condition. Ultimately they took to themselves
goddesses, and thus the total number of beings working in different ways
at the organization of the universe was brought up to nine. Hence they
were called by the collective name of the Ennead, the Nine gods--_pauit
nutiru_,[*]--and the god at their head was entitled _Pauiti_, the god of
the Ennead.

* The first Egyptologists confounded the sign used in
writing _pauit_ with the sign _kh_, and the word _khet,
other_. E. de Rouge was the first to determine its phonetic
value: "it should be read Pau, and designates a body of
gods." Shortly afterwards Beugsch proved that "the group of
gods invoked by E. de Rouge must have consisted of nine "--
of an Ennead. This explanation was not at first admitted
either by Lepsius or by Mariette, who had proposed a mystic
interpretation of the word in his _Memoire sur la mere
d'Apis_, or by E. de Rouge, or by Chabas. The interpretation
a _Nine_, an _Ennead_, was not frankly adopted until later,
and more especially after the discovery of the Pyramid
texts; to-day, it is the only meaning admitted. Of course
the Egyptian Ennead has no other connection than that of
name with the Enneads of the Neo-Platonists.

When creation was completed, its continued existence was ensured by
countless agencies with whose operation the persons of the Ennead were
not at leisure to concern themselves, but had ordained auxiliaries
to preside over each of the functions essential to the regular and
continued working of all things. The theologians of Heliopolis selected
eighteen from among the innumerable divinities of the feudal cults of
Egypt, and of these they formed two secondary Enneads, who were regarded
as the offspring of the Ennead of the creation. The first of the two
secondary Enneads, generally known as the Minor Ennead, recognized
as chief Harsiesis, the son of Osiris. Harsiesis was originally an
earth-god who had avenged the assassination of his father and the
banishment of his mother by Sit; that is, he had restored fulness to the
Nile and fertility to the Delta. When Harsiesis was incorporated into
the solar religions of Heliopolis, his filiation was left undisturbed
as being a natural link between the two Enneads, but his personality
was brought into conformity wit