"Here the rising beams of Sirius flashed down a long vista of massive pylons and illuminated the inner recesses of the temple. What a wonderful scene there must have been enacted within that darkened edifice, when, in the presence of a vast multitude silent in meditation, there suddenly appeared a gleam of silver light, that laved the marble altar in a refulgence born of the infinite, a beam, altho' the watchers knew it not, that had started on its earthward journey 8½ years before it greeted their eyes."
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.
"Far in the south the daring waters rise,
As in disdain of Cancer's burning skies;
Thence, with a downward course, then seek the main,
Direct against the lazy northern wain."
—Lucan's Pharsalia.
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.
"Nile's redundant waters never rise
Till the hot Dog inflames the summer skies;
Nor to his banks his shrinking stream confines,
Till high in Heaven th' autumnal Balance shines."
—Lucan's Pharsalia.
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 part of a lifeless desert. In the words of Amru, Egypt first appears as a dusty plain, then as a fresh sea, and finally as a bed of flowers. To still better understand why seven great temples were erected for Sirius, the "Nile Star," whose constellation was sometimes called "the watch-dog on the Nile," let us read Osborn's graphic description in "Monumental Egypt" of the transformations resulting from the watering of the sands by the overflow of the great river which the Egyptians guarded and held sacred.
"The Nile has shrunk within its banks until its stream has contracted to half its ordinary dimensions, and its turbid, slimy, stagnant waters scarcely seem to flow in any direction. Broad flats or steep banks of black, unbaked Nile mud, form both shores of the river. All beyond is sand and sterility; for the ham-seen or sand-wind of fifty days duration has scarcely ceased to blow. The trunks and branches of the trees may be seen here and there through the dusty, hazy, burning atmosphere, but so entirely are their leaves coated with dust that at a distance they are not distinguishable from the desert sand that surrounds them."
Then comes the inundation: