Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/186

126 the least. Aratos mentions her uncertain position in the heavens:

The Arabs called Cassiopeia "the Lady in the Chair," but curiously enough the early Arabs had in this place a very different figure in no way connected with the figure known to us. They called this star group "the large hand stained with henna" or "the tinted hand," the bright stars marking the finger tips. They also made out of the constellations Cepheus and Cassiopeia, two dogs, and some times referred to Cassiopeia as "the kneeling camel."

In this constellation we have, therefore, an example of the fertile imagination of the early Oriental star-gazers, and a curious combination of objects assigned to a group of stars that is not especially conspicuous,—a lady in a chair, a tinted hand, a dog, and a kneeling camel.

As the stars of this constellation revolve about the Pole, they form when below it a slightly distorted capital "M." This is reversed when Cassiopeia is above the Pole, and we have a celestial letter "W" that enables many to identify the constellation.

In Greece at one time this constellation was known as "the Laconian Key," from its fancied resemblance to that article, and Aratos makes the following reference to this title:

Renouf identified Cassiopeia with the Egyptian star group known as "the Leg," and thus mentioned in the "Book of the Dead," the Bible of Egypt, that most ancient ritual four thousand years old or more: "Hail, leg of the northern sky in the large visible basin."

Cassiopeia belonged to the so-called "Royal Family"