who played such an
important part in the history of his father Osiris, and nothing is said
about Thoth; both gods are, however, included in the company in various
passages of the text, and it may be that their omission from it is the
result of an error of the scribe. We have already given the chief
details of the history of the gods Horus and Thoth, and the principal
gods of the other companies may now be briefly named.

NU was the "father of the gods," and progenitor of the "great company
of the gods"; he was the primeval watery mass out of which all things
came.

PTAH was one of the most active of the three great gods who carried
out the commands of Thoth, who gave expression in words to the will of
the primeval, creative Power; he was self-created, and was a form of
the Sun-god R[=a] as the "Opener" of the day. From certain allusions
in the Book of the Dead he is known to have "opened the mouth"
[Footnote: "May the god Ptah open my mouth"; "may the god Shu open my
mouth with his implement of iron wherewith he opened the mouth of the
gods" (Chap. XXIII.)] of the gods, and it is in this capacity that he
became a god of the cycle of Osiris. His feminine counterpart was the
goddess SEKHET, and the third member of the triad of which he was the
chief was NEFER-TEMU.

PTAH-SEKER is the dual god formed by fusing Seker, the Egyptian name
of the incarnation of the Apis Bull of Memphis, with Ptah.

PTAH-SEKER-AUSAR was a triune god who, in brief, symbolized life,
death, and the resurrection.

KHNEMU was one of the old cosmic gods who assisted Ptah in carrying
out the commands of Thoth, who gave expression in words to the will of
the primeval, creative Power, he is described as "the maker of things
which are, the creator of things which shall be, the source of created
things, the father of fathers, and the mother of mothers." It was he
who, according to one legend, fashioned man upon a potter's wheel.

KHEPERA was an old primeval god, and the type of matter which contains
within itself the germ of life which is about to spring into a new
existence; thus he represented the dead body from which the spiritual
body was about to rise. He is depicted in the form of a man having a
beetle for a head, and this insect became his emblem because it was
supposed to be self-begotten and self-produced. To the present day
certain of the inhabitants of the Sudan, pound the drie