Sah (Orion)

sah

egyptian: Sꜣḥ

Definition

Sah is the Egyptian god who is the constellation Orion (Egyptian Sꜣḥ, Sah). He is the male half of the canonical star-pair Sah and Sopdet — Orion and Sirius. Egyptian art shows him as a striding male figure with a star-marker, set in what its celestial geography calls "the southern sky." In funerary belief Sah is identified with Osiris, and in the *Pyramid Texts* he is where the dead king's soul is bound: the king rises to "become one with Sah" among the imperishable stars.

In Tradition

In Egyptian astronomy and funerary belief, the pair of Sah and Sopdet — Orion and Sirius — is the foundational southern-sky star-pair that anchors both the decanal star-clocks and the reckoning of the calendar year. Wilkinson and Faulkner read Sah as the male pole of the Sopdet-Sah / Isis-Osiris parallel: Sopdet (Isis) rises heliacally just before Sah (Osiris), so the two stars re-enact the central Egyptian myth of Isis recovering Osiris.

In Practice

In Egyptian-tradition glossary work, Sah comes up wherever the decanal star-clocks are in view. His body parts — Predecessor of Orion, Star of Orion (sb' n s'h), Upper Arm of Orion — appear as named hour-stars across the Ramesside diagonal star-clock tables that Neugebauer & Parker compiled. Sah also figures in the New Kingdom Meshet decanal-clock invocation offerings, named alongside Re, Meskhetyu (the Big Dipper), Nut, and Sothis (Sopdet). The Greek tradition identified Sah with Orion itself.

Historical Origin

Sah is attested already in the Old Kingdom *Pyramid Texts* of Pepi I and Pepi II (Dyn 6, late Old Kingdom); the standard translation is R. O. Faulkner, *The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts* (Oxford 1969). His body-part-named hour-stars appear in the Ramesside diagonal star-clock tables — Clagett, *Ancient Egyptian Science* Vol II, Doc III.14, Tables 5-8, the Akhet cluster, pp. 432-434. Sah is invoked alongside Sopdet, Re, and Meskhetyu in the Meshet New Kingdom decanal-clock Stripe R invocation offerings (Clagett, Doc III.11, p. 352).

Further Reading

  • R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts
  • Otto Neugebauer & Richard A. Parker, Egyptian Astronomical Texts, Volume II: The Ramesside Star Clocks
  • Marshall Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science, Volume II: Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy