THE COLOUR OF THE STARS. 181 



Besides Sirius, Vega, Deneb, Regulus, and Spica, are at the 

 present time decidedly white ; and among the small double 



in a downward direction from the sun's disk. Seth is the fiery 

 scorching god, in contradistinction to the warming, fructifying 

 water of the Nile, the goddess Satis who inundates the soiL 

 She is also the goddess of the cataracts, because the overflowing 

 of the Nile began with the appearance of Sothis in the heavens 

 at the summer solstice. In Vettius Valens the star itself is 

 called 2)7$ instead of Sothis ; but neither the name nor the 

 subject admits of our identifying Thoth with Seth or Sothis, as 

 Ideler has done. (Handbueh der Chronologic, bd. i. s. 126.)" 

 (Lepsius, bd. i. s. 136.) 



I will close these observations taken from the early Egyp- 

 tian periods with some Hellenic, Zend, and Sanscrit etymologies : 

 ** 2ip, the sun," says Professor Franz, " is an old root, differing 

 only in pronunciation from 0*p, Qepos, heat, summer, in which 

 we meet with the same change in the vowel sound as in reipoy 

 and rfpos or repas. The correctness of these assigned relations 

 of the radicals o-elp and fap, Qepos, is proved not only by the em- 

 ployment of fapeiraTos in Aratus, v. 149 (Ideler, Sternnamen, 

 s. 241), but also by the later use of the forms ereipos, <rpior, and 

 o-eipivos hot, burning,. , derived from o-eip. It is worthy of notice 

 that <rcipa or Oeipiva t/iema is used the same as Qepiva 1/j.dri.a, 

 light summer clothing. The form treipios seems, however, to 

 have had a wider application ; for it constitutes the ordinary 

 term appended to all stars influencing the summer heat : hence, 

 according to the version of the poet, Archilochus, the sun was 

 (Tfipios acn-J7p, while Ibycus calls the stars generally o-dpia, 

 luminous. It cannot be doubted that it is the sun to which 

 Archilochus refers in the words, TroXXovs p.ev avrov o-ctptos 

 Karavavet 6vs ftXapwr. According to Hesychius and Suidas, 

 Sciptof does indeed signify both the sun and the Dog-star ; but 

 I fully coincide with M. Martin, the new editor of Theon of 

 Smyrna, in believing that the passage of Hesiod (Opera et 

 Dies, v. 417,) refers to the sun, as maintained by Tzetzes and 

 Proclus, and not to the Dog-star. From the adjective a-eipios. 

 which has established itself as the ' epitheton perpetuum of the 

 Dog-star, we derive the verb a-fipiov, which may be translated 

 * to sparkle.' Aratus, v. 331, says of Sirius, oz o-pta, ' it 

 sparkles strongly.' When standing alone, the word 2eip^Vj the 



