Sothis

The combined Isis-Sothis standing in the barque in which she
crossed the heavens. Roman Period.

Female Anthropomorphic Egyptian Gods: Greek Gods

Mythology of Sothis

The goddess who personified the bright, first magnitude star Sirius (the 'dog star') was called Sopdet by the ancient Egyptians and Sothis by the Greeks. Her husband was Sah, god of the neighboring constellation Orion, and her son Soped or Sopdu, another astral deity. The importance of Sirius for the ancient Egyptians lay in the fact that the star's annual appearance on the eastern horizon at dawn heralded the approximate beginning of the Nile's annual inundation which marked the beginning of the agricultural year. Thus the goddess was called 'bringer of the New Year and the Nile flood' and became associated at an early date with Osiris who symbolized this annual resurgence of the Nile and who was also personified in the night sky by the neighboring constellation Orion. Even as early as the Pyramid Texts Sothis was described as having united with the king/Osiris to give birth to the morning star, Venus, and through her association with the netherworld god she was naturally identified with Isis - eventually appearing at times as the combined goddess Isis-Sothis.

Iconography of Sothis

The goddess Sothis with her
characteristic crown surmounted
by a five-pointed star. Late Period
bronze statuette. British Museum.

Although the earliest known representation of Sothis - found on a 1st-Dynasty ivory tablet of Djer from Abydos - depicts the goddess as a reclining cow with a plant-like emblem (perhaps representing the 'year') between her horns, she is almost invariably represented as a woman wearing a tall crown not unlike the White Crown of Upper Egypt but with tall, upswept horns at the sides and surmounted with a five-pointed star. In this form Sothis had few iconographic attributes and is usually depicted as simply standing with arms at her sides or with one arm folded across her lower breast. On occasion the goddess could also be represented as a large dog, however, and in her form of Isis-Sothis she is also shown riding side-saddle on this sybolic animal on some of the coins minted at Alexandria in Roman times.

Worship of Sothis

The star Sirius may have been worshipped as a cow-goddess in predynastic times, but eventually became identified with Isis and with Sothis. While Sothis was clearly a goddess of some importance in her own right, her increasing identification with Isis led to a lessening of her individual identity in later times. In the Old Kingdom she was important as a deity of the inundation and as an afterlife guide to the deceased king, yet by the Middle Kingdom she is identified as a 'mother' and 'nurse', and during the Graeco-Roman Period her assimilation with Isis was almost complete.

Related articles

• Satis (egyptian-gods.info)
• Anukis (egyptian-gods.info)

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