Sopdet

Summary

Sopdet is the star Sirius in the Egyptian sky, and the goddess who is that star; the Greeks called her Sothis. The Global Egyptian Museum explains that Sirius was invisible for a long period and then reappeared at dawn just before the sun, and that this reappearance fell just as the Nile inundation was about to begin. So the "going forth of Sopdet" was made the start of the year, and the goddess was called "Lady of the New Year". She is shown as a woman with a star on her head, sometimes with the cow's horns that Isis also wears.

Her oldest words are in the Pyramid Texts. There the dead king says that "Pepi's sister is Sopdet, and Pepi's offspring is the Morning God", the morning star, and the phrase recurs in spells 265, 266 and 473. The Global Egyptian Museum notes that the Pyramid Texts already make Sothis unite with Osiris and then give birth to the morning star. The king who rises to the sky finds his sister the star there, and from him and her comes a star that rises before the sun.

Later Sopdet belongs to a triad: her husband Sah, the constellation Orion, and their child Sopdu, whom the museum compares with Osiris, Isis and Horus. In the late Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys Isis says to Osiris: "Your sacred image, Orion in heaven, rises and sets every day; I am Sothis who follows him, I will not depart from him!" Orion rises in the east and Sirius rises after him, as the widow walks behind her husband. An embalming ritual says: "Isis is with you as Sothis in the sky." Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature III, p. 117, Egyptian dictionary, Sothis, Isis-Sothis.

Time was reckoned by her rising. In a letter from Illahun, papyrus Berlin 10012, the temple's director writes to the chief lector priest: "You should know that the rising of Sopdet will take place in the fourth month of the season of Peret, day 16." On the back of the Ebers papyrus a table sets the "Opener of the Year" at "month 3 of the season of Shemu, day 9: going forth of Sopdet". The Global Egyptian Museum says we have records of her rising from the reigns of Senwosret III and of Amenhotep I or Thutmose III, and that they fix Egypt's chronology, because the rising of Sirius coincides with the start of the Egyptian solar year only once in 1,460 years. Her rising was a feast: Paheri, mayor of Nekheb, el-Kab, in the Eighteenth Dynasty, lists in his tomb the year's feasts, "the rise of Sothis, the wag-feast, the Thoth-feast".

The idea Sopdet turns on is a star that announces the water. The star vanishes, then returns at dawn in the very days when the Nile begins to rise, and its return is read as a message that life will come back to the land. So the star became Isis, who searches for Osiris and brings him back, and her rising became the head of the year.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since neither of the project's Egyptian essays reads the name; the rereading essay makes Sopdet al-shiʿrā al-yamāniya, Sirius, and Isis. Egyptian writes the name Spd.t, from the root spd, which the Egyptian dictionary gives as "sharp, pointed", "skilled" and "effective", so Sopdet is "the pointed one" or "the sharp one", a star that glitters like a point. In Arabic it is safada: in Lane a saffūd is an iron instrument with prongs on which meat is roasted, sharp and pointed. S is s, Egyptian p is f as in the essay's reading of Ptah as fataḥa, and d is d. The same root gives safada, said of the male covering the female, and Umayya ibn Abī l-Ṣalt uses it of land and water: "the land, God made it a female for the water". The pointed star who unites with Osiris in the Pyramid Texts is the star that rises when the water covers the land.

Linguistic Root

"The pointed one"

The Egyptian dictionary sets Sopdet in one root with the words spd: sharp and pointed, skilled, effective, the triangle spd.t, and the god Sopdu. The name describes sharpness, with the feminine t at its end.

The reading matches every letter: s is s; Egyptian p is f, as in the Egyptian essay's reading of Ptah as fataḥa and in many Egyptian words with p where Arabic has f; d is d; and t is the feminine ending. Lane's saffūd is an iron with curved prongs on which meat is roasted, plural safāfīd, and Lane reports from al-Zamakhsharī that the name is figurative, from the way the iron clings to what is roasted on it. The same root gives safada, the male covering the female, which Umayya ibn Abī l-Ṣalt uses of the land: "the land, God made it a female for the water, so that every fire-stick was made fertile".

So the Arabic root holds the two meanings Sopdet holds: sharpness in the saffūd, as in Egyptian spd, and the meeting of male and female in sifād, as Sopdet unites with Osiris and bears the morning star, and as the Nile water covers the land in the days she rises.

Al-shiʿrā is the star's own Arabic name, not a reading of the name Sopdet, and its letters are different. Lane says al-shiʿrā is a bright star that rises after Gemini in the great heat, and that the Arabs said "when Sirius rises, the owner of the palm-trees begins to see" what their fruit will be; for the Arabs too it was a star that announces what the year will bring. He adds that some of the Arabs worshipped it, hence the Qurʾān's "and that He is the Lord of Sirius" (al-Najm 53:49).

The limit of the reading is that Arabic gives the sense of sharpness only in the instrument noun saffūd, which al-Zamakhsharī takes as figurative, so we do not yet know whether it and Egyptian spd were one root at the start.

Symbolic Reading

The Egyptian rereading essay says the Egyptians watched the sky closely: "Sopdet, Sirius, is Isis: the dawn appearance of Sirius is the start of the Nile flood, so Isis brings life back", and it calls this a precise astronomical calendar. It sets beside it "Sah, Orion, is Osiris", since Orion vanishes for seventy days and then returns, as the days of embalming last seventy days.

Such a link needs a place of observation, a date and a calendar, and the witnesses here supply them: the Illahun letter fixes the day of rising in a particular reign, the Ebers calendar makes it the "Opener of the Year", and the Pyramid Texts and the Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys make the star Isis and Orion Osiris. The essay's reading has its witnesses in the Egyptian texts themselves.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In Iran Sirius is the rain star: Tishtrya, whose hymn says people and herds waited for his rising, asking when the springs would run, until he flew to the sea Vourukasha and fought the drought demon Apaosha. The same star brings water in both lands: the flood in Egypt, the rain in Iran.

Among the Greeks Sirius is the star of heat, not of water. Hesiod says in the Works and Days that Sirius "parches head and knees" in the hot season when the cicada sings, that timber is cut when Sirius passes only a little while by day over men's heads, and that grapes are picked when Orion and Sirius come into mid-heaven. The same summer rising of the star announces the flood to the Egyptians and the drought to the Greeks.

Among the Arabs "when Sirius rises, the owner of the palm-trees begins to see" his fruit; it is the star of the harvest, some of them worshipped it, and the Qurʾān says "and that He is the Lord of Sirius".

In Egypt itself she is tied to Hapy, the flood whose coming she announces, and to Isis, whom she became.