1.  TEMU or ATMU, i.e., the “closer” of the day, just as Ptah was the “opener” of the day.  In the story of the creation he declares that he evolved himself under the form of the god Khepera, and in hymns he is said to be the “maker of the gods”, “the creator of men”, etc., and he usurped the position of R[=a] among the gods of Egypt.  His worship must have been already very ancient at the time of the kings of the Vth dynasty, for his traditional form is that of a man at that time.

2.  SHU was the firstborn son of Temu.  According to one legend he sprang direct from the god, and according to another the goddess Hathor was his mother; yet a third legend makes him the son of Temu by the goddess Ius[=a]set.  He it was who made his way between the gods Seb and Nut and raised up the latter to form the sky, and this belief is commemorated by the figures of this god in which he is represented as a god raising himself up from the earth with the sun’s disk on his shoulders.  As a power of nature he typified the light, and, standing on the top of a staircase at Hermopolis Magua, [Footnote:  See above, pp. 69 and 89.] he raised up the sky and held it up during each day.  To assist him in this work he placed a pillar at each of the cardinal points, and the “supports of Shu” are thus the props of the sky.

3.  TEFNUT was the twin-sister of Shu; as a power of nature she typified moisture or some aspect of the sun’s heat, but as a god of the dead she seems to have been, in some way, connected with the supply of drink to the deceased.  Her brother Shu was the right eye of Temu, and she was the left, i.e., Shu represented an aspect of the Sun, and Tefnut of the Moon.  The gods Temu, Shu, and Tefnut thus formed a trinity, and in the story of the creation the god Temu says, after describing how Shu and Tefnut proceeded from himself, “thus from being one god I became three.”

4.  SEB was the son of the god Shu.  He is called the “Erp[=a],” i.e., the “hereditary chief” of the gods, and the “father of the gods,” these being, of course, Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys.  He was originally the god of the earth, but later he became a god of the dead as representing the earth wherein the deceased was laid.  One legend identifies him with the goose, the bird which, in later times was sacred to him, and he is often called the “Great Cackler,” in allusion to the idea that he made the primeval egg from which the world came into being.

5.  NUT was the wife of Seb and the mother of Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys.  Originally she was the personification of the sky, and represented the feminine principle which was active at the creation of the universe.  According to an old view, Seb and Nut existed in the primeval watery abyss side by side with Shu and Tefnut; and later Seb became the earth and Nut the sky.  These deities were supposed to unite every evening,