briefly described as follows:--

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,