Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/174

 the hottest days of July it rose just before the sun and preceded that luminary all day long in his pathway through the heavens. Not knowing that Sirius lay many millions of millions of miles beyond our solar system, they quite naturally supposed that his bright rays blended with those of the sun, greatly intensifying the heat. Thus Sirius caused the hottest season of the year and all the dried fields, mad dogs, plagues and fevers were attributed to its malignant influence. Since the huge star belonged to the constellation of Canis Major, the Great Dog, it was called the "Dog Star" and these hot, sultry days, the "dog-days." The dog-days lasted for about 40 days, extending from 20 days before the heliacal rising of the Dog-star Sirius to 20 days after. Owing to the precession of the equinoxes, the heliacal rising of Sirius is different from what it was to the ancients and the dog-days are now counted from the 3rd of July to the 11th of August.

Unlike the Greeks, the ancient Egyptians held Sirius in the highest esteem and built splendid temples in its honor in the valley of the Nile. J. Norman Lockyer has made an extensive study of Egyptian temples and has described them most interestingly in his book "The Dawn of Astronomy." During his explorations he found seven temples which were constructed solely to guide the light of Sirius through an opening in the side of the temple, down a long hallway to a point on the central altar. Olcott in "Star Lore of All Ages" visualizes the following beautiful scene in the most notable of these, the temple of Isis at Denerah: