SIRITTS 170 



change of colour in so celebrated a star. Negative proofs are 

 however not often conclusive, and indeed El-Fergani makes no 

 reference in the same passage to the colour of Betelgeux (a 

 Orionis), which is now red, as it was in the age of Ptolemy. 



It has long been acknowledged that of all the brightest 

 luminous fixed stars of heaven, Sirius takes the first and most 

 important place, no less in a chronological point of view, than 

 through its historical association with the earliest develop- 

 ment of human civilization in the valley of the Nile. The era 

 of Sothis the heliacal rising of Sothis (Sirius) on which 

 Biot has written an admirable treatise, indicates, according to 

 the most recent investigations of Lepsius, 51 the complete ar- 

 rangements of the Egyptian calendar into those ancient epochs, 

 including nearly 3300 years before our era, " when not only 

 the summer solstice, and consequently the beginning of the 

 rise of the Nile, but also the heliacal rising of Sothis, fell on the 

 day of the first water-month (or the first Pachon)." I will 

 collect in a note the most recent, and hitherto unpublished, 

 etymological researches on Sothis or Sirius from the Coptic, 

 Zend, Sanscrit, and Greek, which may perhaps be acceptable 

 to those who, from love for the history of astronomy, seek 



in the Arabic and Latin Almagest. Argelander justly observes, 

 in reference to this subject, that Ptolemy in the astrological work 

 (TTpo/3i/3Xos (rvira), the genuine character of which is testi- 

 fied by the style as well as by ancient evidence, has associated 

 planets with stars according to similarity of colour, and has 

 thus connected Martis Stella, Quce urit sicut congruit igneo 

 ipsius colori^ with AurigsD Stella, or Capella. (Comparc- 

 Ptol., Quadripart. Construct., libri iv. Basil, 1551, p. 383.) 

 lUccioli (Almagestum novum, ed. 1650, torn. i. pars i. lib. 6, 

 cap. 2, p. 394) also reckons Capella together with Antares, 

 Aldebaran. and Arcturus among red stars. 



11 See Chronologic der JEgypter, by Richard Lepsius, bd. i. 

 1849, s. 190-195, 213. The complete arrangement of the 

 Egyptian calendar is referred to the earlier part of the year 

 3285 before our era, . e. about a century and a half after the 



N 2 



