| Sopdet | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Sopdet in red dress, with star on her head | |||||
| Name in hieroglyphs |
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| Symbol | Sirius; dog (Ptolemaic/Roman) | ||||
| Consort | Sah (Orion); Osiris | ||||
| Offspring | Sopdu (Venus); Horus | ||||
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Sopdet is the ancient Egyptian name of the star Sirius and its personification as an Egyptian goddess. Known to the Greeks as Sothis, she was conflated with Isis as a goddess and Anubis as a god.
The exact pronunciation of ancient Egyptian is uncertain, as vowels were not recorded until a very late period. In modern transcription, her name usually appears as Sopdet ( Spdt , [3] lit. 'Triangle' or 'Sharp One'), after the known Greek and Latin form Sothis (Σῶθις, Sō̂this).
During the early period of Egyptian civilization, the heliacal rising of the bright star preceded the usual annual flooding of the Nile. [8] It was therefore apparently used for the solar civil calendar which largely superseded the original lunar calendar in the 3rd millennium BC. Despite the wandering nature of the Egyptian calendar, the erratic timing of the flood from year to year, and the slow procession of Sirius within the solar year, Sopdet continued to remain central to cultural depictions of the year and to celebrations of Wep Renpet (Wp Rnpt), the Egyptian New Year. She was also venerated as a goddess of the fertility brought to the soil by the flooding.
She was long thought to be represented by the cow on an ivory tablet from the reign of Djer (Dynasty I), [8] but this is no longer supported by most Egyptologists. [9] During the Old Kingdom, she was an important goddess of the annual flood and a psychopomp guiding deceased pharaohs through the Egyptian underworld. During the Middle Kingdom, she was primarily a mother and nurse and, by the Ptolemaic period, she was almost entirely subsumed into Isis. [10]
Sopdet is the consort of Sah, the personified constellation of Orion near Sirius. Their child Venus [1] was the hawk god Sopdu, [8] "Lord of the East". [11] As the "bringer of the New Year and the Nile flood", she was associated with Osiris from an early date [8] and by the Ptolemaic period Sah and Sopdet almost solely appeared in forms conflated with Osiris [12] and Isis. [10]
She was depicted as a woman with a five-pointed star upon her head, [10] usually with a horned hedjet similar to Satis. [8] In the Ptolemaic and Roman period, the European notion of the "Dog Star" caused her to sometimes be represented as a large dog or as a woman riding one sidesaddle. [10]
From the Middle Kingdom, Sopdet sometimes appeared as a god who held up part of Nut (the sky or firmament) with Hathor. In Greco-Roman Egypt, the male Sopdet was conflated with the dog-headed Anubis. [1]
Anubis, also known as Inpu, Inpw, Jnpw, or Anpu in Ancient Egyptian, is the god of funerary rites, protector of graves, and guide to the underworld, in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head.
Osiris is the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He was classically depicted as a green-skinned deity with a pharaoh's beard, partially mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive atef crown, and holding a symbolic crook and flail. He was one of the first to be associated with the mummy wrap. When his brother Set cut him up into pieces after killing him, Osiris' wife Isis found all the pieces and wrapped his body up, enabling him to return to life. Osiris was widely worshipped until the decline of ancient Egyptian religion during the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire.
Isis was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom as one of the main characters of the Osiris myth, in which she resurrects her slain brother and husband, the divine king Osiris, and produces and protects his heir, Horus. She was believed to help the dead enter the afterlife as she had helped Osiris, and she was considered the divine mother of the pharaoh, who was likened to Horus. Her maternal aid was invoked in healing spells to benefit ordinary people. Originally, she played a limited role in royal rituals and temple rites, although she was more prominent in funerary practices and magical texts. She was usually portrayed in art as a human woman wearing a throne-like hieroglyph on her head. During the New Kingdom, as she took on traits that originally belonged to Hathor, the preeminent goddess of earlier times, Isis was portrayed wearing Hathor's headdress: a sun disk between the horns of a cow.
Nut, also known by various other transcriptions, is the goddess of the sky, stars, cosmos, mothers, astronomy, and the universe in the ancient Egyptian religion. She was seen as a star-covered nude woman arching over the Earth, or as a cow. She was depicted wearing the water-pot sign (nw) that identifies her.
Nephthys or Nebet-Het in ancient Egyptian was a goddess in ancient Egyptian religion. A member of the Great Ennead of Heliopolis in Egyptian mythology, she was a daughter of Nut and Geb. Nephthys was typically paired with her sister Isis in funerary rites because of their role as protectors of the mummy and the god Osiris and as the sister-wife of Set.
Hathor was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion who played a wide variety of roles. As a sky deity, she was the mother or consort of the sky god Horus and the sun god Ra, both of whom were connected with kingship, and thus she was the symbolic mother of their earthly representatives, the pharaohs. She was one of several goddesses who acted as the Eye of Ra, Ra's feminine counterpart, and in this form, she had a vengeful aspect that protected him from his enemies. Her beneficent side represented music, dance, joy, love, sexuality, and maternal care, and she acted as the consort of several male deities and the mother of their sons. These two aspects of the goddess exemplified the Egyptian conception of femininity. Hathor crossed boundaries between worlds, helping deceased souls in the transition to the afterlife.
Satet,Satit or Satjet, Satjit in Ancient Egyptian, Greek: Satis, also known by numerous related names, was an Upper Egyptian goddess who, along with Khnum and Anuket, formed part of the Elephantine Triad. A protective deity of Egypt's southern border with Nubia, she came to personify the former annual flooding of the Nile and to serve as a war, hunting, and fertility goddess.
Sopdu was a god of the sky and of eastern border regions in the religion of Ancient Egypt. He was Khensit's husband.
The Season of the Emergence was the second season of the lunar and civil Egyptian calendars. It fell after the Season of the Inundation and before the Season of the Harvest. In the Coptic and Egyptian calendars this season begins at the start of the month of Tobi, continues through the months of Meshir and Paremhat, before concluding at the end of Parmouti.
The Season of the Harvest or Low Water was the third and final season of the lunar and civil Egyptian calendars. It fell after the Season of the Emergence and before the spiritually dangerous intercalary month, after which the New Year's festivities began the Season of the Inundation (Ꜣḫt). In the Coptic and Egyptian calendars this season begins at the start of the month of Pashons, continues through the months of Paoni and Epip, before concluding at the end of Mesori.
The ancient Egyptian calendar – a civil calendar – was a solar calendar with a 365-day year. The year consisted of three seasons of 120 days each, plus an intercalary month of five epagomenal days treated as outside of the year proper. Each season was divided into four months of 30 days. These twelve months were initially numbered within each season but came to also be known by the names of their principal festivals. Each month was divided into three 10-day periods known as decans or decades. It has been suggested that during the Nineteenth Dynasty and the Twentieth Dynasty the last two days of each decan were usually treated as a kind of weekend for the royal craftsmen, with royal artisans free from work.
The intercalary month or epagomenal days of the ancient Egyptian, Coptic, and Ethiopian calendars are a period of five days in common years and six days in leap years in addition to those calendars' 12 standard months, sometimes reckoned as their thirteenth month. They originated as a periodic measure to ensure that the heliacal rising of Sirius would occur in the 12th month of the Egyptian lunar calendar but became a regular feature of the civil calendar and its descendants. Coptic and Ethiopian leap days occur in the year preceding Julian and Gregorian leap years.
Anput is a goddess in ancient Egyptian religion. Her name is written in hieroglyphs as jnpwt. In English, her name also is rendered as Anupet, Input, Inpewt, and Yineput. As the female counterpart of her husband, Anubis, who was known as jnpw to the Egyptians, Anput's name ends in a feminine "t" suffix when seen as jnpwt.
Certain numbers were considered sacred, holy, or magical by the ancient Egyptians, particularly 2, 3, 4, 7, and their multiples and sums.
Ancient Egyptian creation myths are the ancient Egyptian accounts of the creation of the world. The Pyramid Texts, tomb wall decorations, and writings, dating back to the Old Kingdom have provided the majority of information regarding ancient Egyptian creation myths. These myths also form the earliest religious compilations in the world. The ancient Egyptians had many creator gods and associated legends. Thus, the world or more specifically Egypt was created in diverse ways according to different parts of ancient Egypt. Some versions of the myth indicate spitting, others masturbation, as the act of creation. The earliest god, Ra and/or Atum, emerged from a chaotic state of the world and gave rise to Shu (air) and Tefnut (moisture), from whose union came Geb (earth) and Nut (sky), who in turn created Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. An extension to this basic framework was the Osiris myth involving Osiris, his consort Isis, and their son Horus. The murder of Osiris by Set, and the resulting struggle for power, won by Horus, provided a powerful narrative linking the ancient Egyptian ideology of kingship with the creation of the cosmos.
The worship of heavenly bodies is the veneration of stars, the planets, or other astronomical objects as deities, or the association of deities with heavenly bodies. In anthropological literature these systems of practice may be referred to as astral cults.
Heqet, sometimes spelled Heket, is an Egyptian goddess of fertility, identified with Hathor, represented in the form of a frog. To the Egyptians, the frog was an ancient symbol of fertility, related to the annual flooding of the Nile. Heqet was originally the female counterpart of Khnum, or the wife of Khnum by whom she became the mother of Her-ur. It has been proposed that her name is the origin of the name of Hecate, the Greek goddess of witchcraft.
Sah was a god in Ancient Egyptian religion, representing a constellation that encompassed the stars in Orion and Lepus, as well as stars found in some neighbouring modern constellations.
Several non-native societies had an influence on Ancient Pompeian culture. Historians’ interpretation of artefacts, preserved by the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79, identify that such foreign influences came largely from Greek and Hellenistic cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt. Greek influences were transmitted to Pompeii via the Greek colonies in Magna Graecia, which were formed in the 8th century BC. Hellenistic influences originated from Roman commerce, and later conquest of Egypt from the 2nd century BC.
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