Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/175

 Why did the Egyptians reverence this star and hold it sacred while the ancient Greeks watched the same heliacal rising and vehemently denounced it for journeying so close to the sun at a season when additional heat was least desired? The Egyptians thought little about the heat, but with the appearance of this star just before the rising of the sun they knew that the season had arrived for the annual overflow of the Nile.

This heliacal rising of Sirius, which the Egyptians called Sothis, was an event which needs must be heeded, for, having no calendars in those ancient days, it served as a warning that the river would soon overflow its banks and make a vast sea of the lowlands. It then behooved the husbandmen and gardeners to act quickly, and move themselves and their herds and flocks up to the dykes in a place of safety.

During the inundation the lowlands are so completely covered with water that towns and villages rise like islands, while here and there are seen the tops of groves and fruit-trees like shrubs on the surface of the sea. This "yearly tribute of rains" which the Nile brings from other countries, gives new life to the parched land of the Egyptians. Herodotus, centuries ago, said that Egypt was the gift of this river, for without it their country would be a