-and it was on their account that
Hermopolis was named _Khmunu_, the City of the Eight. Ultimately they
were deprived of the little individual life still left to them, and were
fused into a single being to whom the texts refer as Khomninu, the god
Eight.

[Illustration: 212.jpg THE HERMOPOLITAN OGDOAD. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from a photograph by Beato. Cf.
Lepsius, Denkm., iv. pl. 66 c. In this illustration I have
combined! the two extremities of a great scene at Philae, in
which the _Eight_, divided into two groups of four, frog-
headed men, and the goddesses serpent-headed women. Morning
and evening do they sing; and the mysterious hymns
wherewith they salute the rising and the setting sun ensure
the continuity of his course. Their names did not survive
their metamorphoses; each pair had no longer more than a
single name, the termination of each name varying according
as a god or a goddess was intended:--Nu and Nuit, Hehu and
Hehit, Kaku and Kakit, Ninu and Ninit, the god One and the
god Eight, the Monad and the Ogdoad. The latter had scarcely
more than a theoretical existence, and was generally
absorbed into the person of the former. Thus the theologians
of Hermopolis gradually disengaged the unity of their feudal
god from the multiplicity of the cosmogonie deities.

[Illustration: 213.jpg AMON. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from a bronze statuette found at
Thebes, and now in my possession.

By degrees the Ennead of Thot was thus reduced to two terms: take part
in the adoration of the king. According to a custom common towards the
Graeco-Roman period, the sculptor has made the feet of his gods like
jackals' heads; it is a way of realizing the well-known metaphor which
compares a rapid runner to the jackal roaming around Egypt.

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 num