Sirius in different cultures

Ancient Egypt: When Sirius rises over the eastern horizon at dawn (a phenomenon known in astronomy as "co-sunrise"), it is the annual time of the Nile flooding, which irrigates large areas of fertile land on both sides, and the Egyptians begin their cultivation again. Pen ~ Fun ~ Pavilion www.biquge.info The ancient Egyptians recognized that the Nile Delta began to flood every year when the sun rose, that is, just before the sun rose. And they found that the time interval between the two sunrises of Sirius was not 365 days in the Egyptian calendar year, but 365.25 days. Ancient Egypt identified the day Sirius rose in the east before dawn as the year of the year. The predecessor of the Gregorian calendar, which is now in use, was first born in ancient Egypt.

The pyramids were conceived and built from an astronomical point of view. Sirius is one of the few planets associated with the pyramids, but it is precisely this focus on Sirius that makes people feel rather strange. For when one were to observe Sirius from the city of Memphis, it could only be seen in the vast morning light near the horizon at the beginning of the Nile flood. There is a detailed almanac in Egypt - 421 B.C., which is confusing enough! The almanac is based on the rising of Sirius (the first manifestation is July 19) and has a year period of more than 32,000 years.

Greek and Roman Cultures: Sirius has a special meaning in many cultures, especially representing dogs. In fact, he is the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major and is most often colloquially referred to as the "Canine Star." He is also a dog in traditional Orion mythology: the ancient Greeks believed that the light of Sirius had a bad effect on dogs, causing them to have an unusual summer fever ("dog day"): their excessive panting led to excessive dryness and the danger of disease. In extreme cases, a foaming dog may have rabies, which can lead to infection and death of the person bitten. The ancient Romans knew that these days were dog days and called the star a canicula.

Asian Culture: In Chinese astronomy, this star is called Sirius (the wolf of the sky); Roman pinyin in Chinese: tiānláng; Romanized pinyin in Japanese: tenro; The romanization of Korea: cheonlang), and the star official in China is Jingsu. The ancient Chinese combined it with the constellation Asterus and Canis Major to imagine a large bow across the southern sky, and in this combination, the arrow was facing Sirius. A similar combination is also found on the murals of the temple of Hathor in Dendera, Egypt. In later Persian culture, the star was called tir and was used as an arrow. The goddess Saudis (satis) painted her arrows on the minotaur goddess Hathor (Sirius).

American Culture: Many Native Americans of North America also associated Sirius with dogs; The native people of the southwest, Seri and Tokhnooham noted that the star is a dog that follows the Sheep Mountain, and Blackfoot calls it a 'dog face', and the Chairoki pair Sirius and Antares as guardian dogs at both ends of the soul path. The Bonnie of Nebraska have several associations; The wolves see it as the 'Wolf Star', while the other tribes consider it the 'Coyote Star'. Further north, in the Bering Strait of Alaska, Inuit called the star the "Dog of the Moon". Some cultures associate this star with a bow and arrow.

Sirius' Unsolved Mysteries:

In Egypt, almost all religious buildings and funerary buildings are oriented to astronomical significance. One of the celestial bodies that was aligned by the Egyptians with a collimator was Sirius. Many temples face this star (e.g. the Temple of Hator in Dandra). Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky and is easy to find. However, this feature alone is not enough to explain the whole story. The architects have kept this exact position in mind: the position of Sirius in the sky near July 15. In ancient Egypt, Sirius returned to the sky at this time of year.

The Earth's orbit around the Sun and the Earth's rotation cause the stars in the night sky to vary from night to night. When night falls, some of the stars rise later until they disappear from the night sky for several weeks, and then return to the sky. The fact is that every year in mid-July, after 70 days of "escape", Sirius "reappears". Before sunrise, it appeared in the faint morning light, shining in the Egyptian sky. However, as it happens, the annual Nile high tide, an important event that was indispensable to Egyptian life, also took place at this time. Every year in mid-July, when Sirius rises in the east before dawn, the Nile River begins to flood. Some of the silt overflows the riverbed with the water, moistening the surrounding land. When the tide recedes, farmers begin to sow seeds on the fertile soil. All agricultural production in Egypt is closely related to the ebb and flow of the Nile. As a result, the Egyptians worshipped Sirius as a god, and even built temples in the same direction as Sirius rose.

There is also a related puzzle, which is related to Sirius. The ancient Egyptians loved to associate Sirius with Isis. Isis is the sister and spouse of Osiris and the mother of Horus. There is a passage in the pyramid verse that is written precisely about Osiris:

Your sister Isis is here, you are happy, you love. You put her on top of you...... Because of having children, Isis grew up, like Sept (referring to Sirius).

Ho-rus-Sept was born in the name of the inhabitants of Seput.

An unusual star, Sirius shines exceptionally brightly on winter nights in the Northern Hemisphere. As the pyramid verse indicates, it has a dual planetary identity: what we see as Sirius A. Sirius B surrounds Sirius A, but it's too small for our naked eyes to see. It wasn't until 186z that the American astronomer Alvin Clark discovered its existence with the largest and newest celestial telescope at the time. It was also the first time the world had seen Siriusb. However, how did the writers of the pyramid verses learn that Sirius is a two-star system?

Both the ancient Egyptians and the "gods" must have spent a lot of time observing celestial phenomena, especially Sirius. Ancient Egypt had a very convenient concept of the Sirius cycle calendar, which they believed to be given by the gods (the ancient Egyptian calendar had a cycle of 1460 years, and the solar calendar had a cycle of 1461 years).

The so-called Sirius cycle is "the cycle in which Sirius rises again in the same place as the Sun". During the regular season, Sirius disappears from the sky and then rises again from the eastern sky before the sun rises to dawn. In terms of time, if the mantissa of the decimal point is divided, the period is 365.25 days.

What is particularly surprising is that of the 2,000 stars we can discern with the naked eye, only one star rises at the same time as the Sun on an exact 365.25-day cycle, which is also the result of the "propermotion" (the speed at which the planet moves in the universe) and the precession movement of the star. At the same time, in the ancient Egyptian calendar, the day when Sirius rose before the sun was specially designated as New Year's Day. Previously, in Heliopolis, the place where the pyramid verses were written, the ancient Egyptians had calculated the coming of New Year's Day and informed all the temples on the Nile.

In the pyramid verses, Sirius is named "hernameofthenewgear". By all indications, the Sirius ephemeris is at least as old as the pyramid scriptures, and the origins of both are invariably engulfed in the distant mists of the primeval pasture. One of the most inscrutable mysteries is that in that incomparably ancient time, who had such a high level of scientific and technological knowledge observed and recorded the very coincidental difference between the cycle of the Sun and Sirius by 365.25 days? The French mathematician R.A. Schwaller Delubicz once said that Sirius's cycle is "a completely unforeseen and unexpected celestial phenomenon".

We have nothing to say about the scientists who discovered this purely accidental phenomenon except admiration. Sirius was chosen because it was the only one of the countless stars that had moved the necessary distance in the right direction. To this day, we still forget that this phenomenon was known to mankind as early as 4,000 years ago, and that the discovery of this phenomenon requires long-term observation of the movement of celestial bodies.

The inference we can draw from the pyramid texts is that the long-term and correct observation of the movements of the celestial bodies and the scientific recording of them are the inheritance of the prehistoric Egyptians.

Tribal Mystery

The Dogane people, who live in the southern mountains of the Timbuktu region of the Republic of Mali, are one of the indigenous peoples of Africa who still maintain a primitive jungle life.

In 1930, two French ethnographers, Marcel Gliole and Jomai De Théron, went deep into the primitive tribe of Dogan and collected many unique myths and legends. They unexpectedly discovered the mystery of the Sirius that astronomers had debated for a century, and found the answer in the myths and legends of the Tagan people.

Sirius is one of the brightest stars visible to the naked eye in the night sky, even though it is 8.7 light-years away – 51 trillion miles from Earth. Many ancient astronomical writings record that Sirius is dark red, but in modern eyes, Sirius is white, why did Sirius change color? This mystery fascinates scientists.

The people of Dogan told French scientists that Sirius is made up of a large star, a black, extremely dense and invisible companion star, which orbits the large star in an elliptical orbit. They also knew that twice the period of the star's motion was 100 years, and that they had passed it down from generation to generation, that Sirius was the smallest and heaviest star in the sky, that there was a luminous metallic substance that was not found on Earth, and that in an accident Sirius suddenly exploded and had a strong light, and then gradually dimmed. Although the Tagans could not see the faint companion star with the naked eye, the old people were able to draw the path and various patterns of the two stars on the ground with their walking sticks. When Sirius appears between the two peaks, a ritual called "Sikyu" is held, which takes place about once every 60 years and is the most solemn religious ceremony.

According to Dunpole, the Dogans' knowledge of the Celestial Ruthless Star is both detailed and accurate. As we have seen, they, like us, have the idea that the Celestial Ruthless Star has an invisible companion star. The people of Tagang call this companion star "Valley Star". The Tagan people called it the Valley Star, probably because it was so small that it was almost impossible to see. According to the Tagan people, the "valley star" is made of the heaviest metal known today, which is even heavier than iron. This means that the people of Tagang know that the Celestial Ruthless Star B has a great density.

The Tagans also painted a number of ceremonial drawings of the Sirius system, which suggest that the Tagans understood that Sirius B's orbit around Sirius A was elliptical, with Sirius A at the center. According to the legend of the Dogans, Dumbol even drew a picture of the oscillating orbits of Sirius and the "Valley", which turned out to be strikingly similar to the same diagram painted by modern astronomers of Sirius A and B.

According to the Tagans, their ancestors' knowledge of Sirius b was imparted by a god named "Som". The Tagans still have a painting clearly depicting their "gods" descending from the sky and descending to their clan in a large ship with flames in tow.

The astronomical traditions of the Togan people are not limited to Sirius. They said that Jupiter has 4 moons and Saturn has rings, and they represented these two planets in their map. (To be continued.) )