The Sirius Mystery by Robert Temple

Author:Robert Temple
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

Graves continues :19 ‘Cerberus, associated by the Dorians with the dogheaded Egyptian god Anubis who conducted souls to the Underworld, seems to have originally been the Death-goddess Hecate, or Hecabe; she was portrayed as a bitch because dogs eat corpse flesh and howl at the moon. . . . Orthrus, who fathered [various creatures] on Echidna *42 was Sirius, the Dog-star, which inaugurated the Athenian New Year. He had two heads, like Janus, because the reformed year at Athens had two seasons, not three.’ The three heads of Hecate, of Cerberus in his simplified form, etc., possibly all represent the old, original year which had three seasons and originated in Egypt with the the seasons of their (1) inundation, (2) sowing, (3) harvesting, which were traditional there. But it seems unlikely. For why would the three goddesses sail in their Sirius boat in Egyptian representations which have absolutely nothing to do with a calendar? In short, the three goddesses and the three-headedness always to do with Sirius are not calendrical at all. But by the extremely late (post- Classical) times of Athens, calendrical explanations may have become fashionable for what could not otherwise be explained.

In the above passages I hope the reader will note the specific information that connects Anubis (which much earlier I identified on altogether separate grounds with the orbit of Sirius B) with the Greek version of Anubis, Cerberus, with his fifty heads. In the Egyptian tradition I hadn’t found any specific connection between Anubis and fifty. It is true that we have found the Egyptian word qeti means both ‘oarsman’ and ‘orbit’, and as there were always fifty oarsmen in the Sirius-related boats, both in Greek and Sumerian saga, we were on our way to an identification on solid grounds. But here at last a specific connection has come to light, and would seem to be a splendid confirmation of my identification! And furthermore, we see that the dog Orthrus who was the brother of Cerberus, was specifically identified with Sirius. We thus have found in the Mediterranean world all the elements of the description of the Sirius system which were possessed by the Dogon. And we have also traced the Mediterranean Sirius lore to the Dogon by way of Libya, then the Saharan oases, then Timbuktoo, and finally the south bank of the Upper Niger and the Dogon region. Thus, through thousands of miles and thousands of years, we have discovered the source of that strange tradition still intact among a tribe deep in Africa. But there is more to be learnt. We must examine the Mediterranean tradition more closely, and particularly its oldest Egyptian origins in the shadowy pre-dynastic world of Behdet (which seems not to have been excavated and has presumably been lost in the mud of the Nile delta).

The father of Orthrus the Sirius-dog and his brother Cerberus the fiftyheaded dog was the monster Typhon whom we mentioned a moment ago (see Figure 49, later on). And it is worth while for

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