The Asiatics used not to trace the images of their constellations, but simply joined the component stars by straight lines, and placed at the side the hieroglyphic characters that represented the object they wished to name. Thus joining by five lines the principal stars in Orion, they placed at the side the hieroglyphics representing a man and a sword, from whence the Greeks derived the figure they afterwards drew of a giant armed with a sword.
We must include in this series that brightest of all stars, Sirius. It forms part of the constellation of the Great Dog, and lies to the south of Orion near the extreme limit of our vision into the Southern hemisphere in our latitudes. This star seems to have been intimately connected with Egypt, and to have derived its name—as well as the name of the otherwise unimportant constellation it forms part of—from that country, and in this way:—
The overflowing of the Nile was always preceded by an Etesian wind, which, blowing from north to south about the time of the passage of the sun beneath the stars of the Crab, drove the mists to the south, and accumulated them over the country whence the Nile takes its source, causing abundant rains, and hence the flood. The greatest importance attached to the foretelling the time of this event, so that people might be ready with their provisions and their places of security. The moon was no use for this purpose, but the stars were, for the inundation commenced when the sun was in the stars of the Lion. At this time the stars of the Crab just appeared in the morning, but with them, at some distance from the ecliptic, the bright star Sirius also rose. The morning rising of this star was a sure precursor of the inundation. It seemed to them to be the warning star, by whose first appearance they were to be ready to move to safer spots, and thus acted for each family the part of a faithful dog. Whence they gave it the name of the Dog, or Monitor, in Egyptian Anubis, in Phenician Hannobeach, and it is still the Dog-Star—Caniculus, and its rising commences our dog-days. The intimate connection between the rising of this star and the rising of the Nile led people to call it also the Nile star, or simply the Nile; in Egyptian and Hebrew, Sihor; in Greek, Σοθίς; in Latin, Sirius.
In the same way the Egyptians and others characterised the different days of the year by the stars which first appeared in the evening—as we shall see more particularly with reference to the Pleiades—and in this way certain stars came to be associated in their calendar with variations of temperature and operations of agriculture. They soon took for the cause what was originally but the sign, and thus they came to talk of moist stars, whose rising brought rain, and arid stars, which brought drought. Some made certain plants to grow, and others had influence over animals.
In the case of Egypt, no other so great event could occur as that which the Dog-Star foretold, and its appearance was consequently made the commencement of the year. Instead, therefore, of painting it as a simple star, in which case it would be indistinguishable from others, they gave it shape according to its function and name. When they wished to signify that it opened the year, it was represented as a porter bearing keys, or else they gave it two heads, one of an old man, to represent the passing year, the other of a younger, to denote the succeeding year. When they would represent it as giving warning of the inundation they painted it as a dog. To illustrate what they were to do when it appeared, Anubis had in his arms a stew-pot, wings to his feet, a large feather under his arm, and two reptiles behind him, a tortoise and a duck.
There is also in the celestial sphere a constellation called the Little Dog and Procyon; the latter name has an obvious meaning, as appearing before the Dog-Star.
We cannot follow any farther the various constellations of the northern sphere, nor of the southern. The zodiacal constellations we must reserve for the present, while we conclude by referring to some of the changes in form and position that some of the above-mentioned have undergone in the course of their various representations.
These changes are sometimes very curious, as, for example, in a coloured chart, printed at Paris in 1650, we have the Charioteer drawn in the costume of Adam, with his knees on the Milky Way, and turning his back to the public; the she-goat appears to be climbing over his neck, and two little she-goats seem to be running towards their mother. Cassiopeia is more like King Solomon than a woman. Compare this with the Phenomena of Aratus, published 1559, where Cassiopeia is represented sitting on an oak chair with a ducal back, holding the holy palm in her left hand, while the Coachman, "Erichthon," is in the costume of a minion of Henry the Third of France. Now compare the Cassiopeia of the Greeks with that drawn in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or the Coachman of the same periods, and we can easily see the fancies of the painters have been one of the most fertile sources of change. They seem, too, to have had the fancy in the middle ages to draw them all hideous and turning their backs. Compare, for instance, the two pictures of Andromeda and Hercules, as given below, where those on one side are as heavy and gross as the others are artistic and pretty. Unfortunately for the truth of Andromeda's beauty, as depicted in these designs, she was supposed to be a negress, being the daughter of the Ethiopians, Cepheus and Cassiopeia. Not one of the drawings indicates this; indeed they all take after their local beauties.
Fig. 7.