Sothis (Sopdet)

SOH-this

egyptian: Spdt (Sopdet) · greek: Σῶθις (Sothis)

Definition

Sothis is the Greek name, and Sopdet (Spdt) the Egyptian name, for the star Sirius (Alpha Canis Majoris) — the brightest star in the night sky. The Egyptians treated her as a goddess. Her yearly heliacal rising in mid-July — her first dawn appearance after roughly seventy days hidden from view — was read as the sign that the Nile flood was coming, and it anchored both the Egyptian civil calendar and the Sothic cycle.

In Tradition

Egyptologists and archaeoastronomers (Belmonte and Lull, Krauss, Clagett, Neugebauer and Parker, Campion) treat Sothis-Sopdet as the foundational star of Egypt's sky-religion and calendar. In the Pyramid-Text doctrine of the afterlife, Belmonte and Lull cast her as one parent of the Morning Star — Venus, the dead king reborn as "son of Sah and Sopdet." Both the Sothic cycle and the heliacal-Sirius dating system are named for her.

In Practice

Egyptologists use the heliacal rising of Sothis to date events in Egyptian history, through the Sothic cycle — the roughly 1,461-civil-year span over which the 365-day calendar drifts back into step with the real Sothic year. You can still pick out Sopdet today: she is Sirius rising just before the Sun in mid-July at Egyptian latitudes, though the exact date and how long she lags behind the Sun depend on how far north you are and on the clarity of the air. Astrologers working in the Egyptian decan idiom treat Sopdet as the first decan of the cycle and the star that marks the new year (wepet renpet).

Historical Origin

Sopdet appears in the Pyramid Texts of the late Old Kingdom (PT 302, PT 442, PT 519 among others; around the 24th-23rd centuries BCE). Belmonte and Lull trace her image from the oldest Egyptian astronomical records on late First Intermediate Period coffins, through New Kingdom astronomical ceilings (Senenmut TT 353, Ramesside royal tombs), to the Dendera ceiling. Crane, Astrological Roots, records the Greek reception of Sirius (Seirios — "scorching") as carrying a Jupiter-Mars or Mars-Saturn nature in fixed-star doctrine.

Further Reading

  • Juan Antonio Belmonte and Jose Lull, In Search of Cosmic Order: Selected Essays on Egyptian Archaeoastronomy
  • Otto Neugebauer and Richard A. Parker, Egyptian Astronomical Texts I-III
  • Nicholas Campion, A History of Western Astrology, Volume I: The Ancient World