Ahhh. I always wandered why the Egyptian "Dog days" were located on the solar year at the hottest part of the year, the end of July, beginning of August...So I looked at the Ancient Egyptian dog breeds...
First thing I found out that the Ancient Egyptian loved hunting dogs.
And that their word for "hunting dog" was "Tesem". And that it was written in hieroglyphics using the image of a prick-eared, leggy dog with a curled tail from the early Egyptian age...
There were three main types of dogs in Ancient Egypt: pariah dog (basenji), two kinds of greyhound-like dogs and a molosser-type dog....And the one shown on Tesem hieroglyph is definitely the "pariah dog" known in Egypt as basenji.
The "pariah dog" is the name given to the half wild dog species still found around the world. They are the closest we still have to the old wild dogs...And they have preserved one important characteristic of wild dogs: They have one breading season...
And guess when that breeding season starts? You guessed correctly. During dog days, end of July beginning of August, the hottest part of the year in the Northern hemisphere...Here is the page about the "pariah dogs" from Princeton "Canids of the world".
Basenji dogs are close cousins of Canaan dogs also known as Egyptian desert dogs, Bedouin Sheepdogs and Palestinian Pariah Dogs...
For the Egyptians the sight of these doggies dogging must have been a very pleasing sight indeed. Because the start of the Basenji breeding season coincided with Nile flood maximum...
I talked about this in my post "Holy cow".
No wonder then that it is the Dog headed god Set who "defends Ra from the Serpent of Chaos Apep". The serpent is the symbol of sun's heat. And the dog days mark that maximum. After that the northern hemisphere starts cooling (the serpent is dying)...I talked about this in my post "Apep".
Of course Set (Dog) is helped in his valiant fight against Apep (The Dragon) by Bastet (Lion, Cat). No wonder. Dog days fall in the middle of Leo...And Leo is where it is because it marks the beginning of the mating season of the Eurasian lions...I talked about this too in my post "Apep".
And that's that...
Oh almost forgot. The time when in Ancient Egypt the Pariah dogs started getting frisky and when the Nile flood arrived, at that same time, Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, was also rising...Is his why the star was eventually, when Greeks, who called that part of the year "Dog days" arrived to Egypt, called The Dog Star? The star that rises during Dog Days? The days when Pariah dogs are mating?
This link between this ancient dog breed, Dog Days and Dog Star seems to have once been widespread. North America, China, India, Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, Rome...Finally Egypt...I think this is a very interesting theme which requires more research and which will most likely point at the common prehistoric system of symbols and beliefs linked to the common dog breed, with common single breeding season, dog days, found in all these areas...
If we look at the oldest known depictions of dogs, they all show Pariah dogs.
Prehistoric rock art found in Saudi Arabia shows humans hunting with Pariah dogs on leashes. These pictures could be at least 8,000 years old, making them the earliest art depicting dogs.
Before the discovery of this rock art from Saudi Arabia, it was was believed that the oldest depictions of dogs were the ones found on pottery shards from Tepe Sabz in Iran, which are almost 8000 years old. They depict the same Pariah dog breed...
The domestication of dogs happened at the European edges of the Eurasian steppe. 30,000 years old dog fossils from Palaeolithic sites in Belgium, the Ukraine and Russia are the earliest proof we have of canids which are different from wolves...
The earliest proof of dogs actually being part of human society are the remains of a dog found buried with two humans, dating back 14,700 years, in Germany...
So, it seems that the dogs spread throughout the world from Europe. And because domesticated dogs stay with humans, they must have spread with the humans who originally domesticated them...Which haplogroup was responsible for the dog diffusion? Was that dog the Pariah dog? Did Pariah dog always have a single mating season which started at the same time (July-August)? And is it during this expansion of the Mesolithic-Neolithic hunters and their Pariah dogs, that the link between the mating period of Pariah dogs (Dog Days) and the Dog Star - Sirius was forged in all these places around the world?
Oh almost forgot. The time when in Ancient Egypt the Pariah dogs started getting frisky and when the Nile flood arrived, at that same time, Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, was also rising...Is his why the star was eventually, when Greeks, who called that part of the year "Dog days" arrived to Egypt, called The Dog Star? The star that rises during Dog Days? The days when Pariah dogs are mating?
This link between this ancient dog breed, Dog Days and Dog Star seems to have once been widespread. North America, China, India, Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, Rome...Finally Egypt...I think this is a very interesting theme which requires more research and which will most likely point at the common prehistoric system of symbols and beliefs linked to the common dog breed, with common single breeding season, dog days, found in all these areas...
If we look at the oldest known depictions of dogs, they all show Pariah dogs.
Prehistoric rock art found in Saudi Arabia shows humans hunting with Pariah dogs on leashes. These pictures could be at least 8,000 years old, making them the earliest art depicting dogs.
Before the discovery of this rock art from Saudi Arabia, it was was believed that the oldest depictions of dogs were the ones found on pottery shards from Tepe Sabz in Iran, which are almost 8000 years old. They depict the same Pariah dog breed...
The domestication of dogs happened at the European edges of the Eurasian steppe. 30,000 years old dog fossils from Palaeolithic sites in Belgium, the Ukraine and Russia are the earliest proof we have of canids which are different from wolves...
The earliest proof of dogs actually being part of human society are the remains of a dog found buried with two humans, dating back 14,700 years, in Germany...
So, it seems that the dogs spread throughout the world from Europe. And because domesticated dogs stay with humans, they must have spread with the humans who originally domesticated them...Which haplogroup was responsible for the dog diffusion? Was that dog the Pariah dog? Did Pariah dog always have a single mating season which started at the same time (July-August)? And is it during this expansion of the Mesolithic-Neolithic hunters and their Pariah dogs, that the link between the mating period of Pariah dogs (Dog Days) and the Dog Star - Sirius was forged in all these places around the world?
I enjoy your posts. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteSince Sirius has been called the Dog Star for millennia, and always considered Orions faithful companion, and both Orion and Sirius being very important throughout Egyptian history..and Sirius does rise in the hottest part of the year, is it possible that is the connection? Maybe, just maybe everything our ancestors thought or did wasn't always about the Zodiac. Were they always that obsessed with it?
ReplyDeleteBut this is not about Zodiac...This is about use of animal symbols in general...What is your explanation for naming of Sirius as The Dog Star or Canis constellations Dog constellations? Also have a look at other articles linked from this article. Look at all the other animal symbolism from Egyptian mythology which corresponds exactly to the behaviour of animals used and the occurrence of that behaviour within solar year...
DeleteI get the symbolism. I see it. I think you're more referring to seasons than the zodiac. I wondered about their obsession with the zodiac. Seasons were and are vital to either hunters/gatherers or agricultural people. I'm not sure why I was thinking zodiac. I've read many of your posts in your archives. I'm curious, have you looked into the Vinca symbols? Did I miss posts on them? I have a gut feeling they are writing. I've researched it but there isn't too much out there. Any opinion? Places I could look? My name is Scott. I'm in Chicago.
DeleteThe picture called "cat killing Apep" is actually Wenet the Swift One.
ReplyDeleteShe was usually portrayed as a woman with a hares head, but sometimes she was shown in the form of a hare with a cheetah's spots or a hare/cheetah hybrid.
The article in Wikipedia misattributes the god in the picture as being "The sun god Ra, in the form of Great Cat", but it's Wenet.
...from Spell 17 of The Egyptian Book of the Dead in which the great cat Mau kills Apophis with a knife. Mau was the divine cat, a personification of the sun god...
DeleteAlso Bastet ...would turn into a cat to protect Ra from his greatest enemy, the serpent Apep....
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