Sopdet Sharp one
Associated: Sopdet Star (the Sirius), inundation of the Nile
Culture: North Africa Kemetic Egyptian
Cult Center: Per Sopdet
Period of Worship : predynastic peris through Greco-Roman
invasion
Consort Sah (Orion)
Offspring: Sopdu Venus
The Astral Goddess
Sopdet (Sepdet, Sothis) personified the 'dog star' Sirius.
This star was the most important of the stars to the ancient Egyptians.
SOPDET, or SIRIUS, is
the brightest of all the fixed, stars, and is regarded as the most important
star in the sky, in Kemetic Beliefs,
forming the astronomical foundation of their religious system,
delineating the rhythms, and cycles, by which they lived, and establishing its,
mysterious connection, with humanity.
The heliacal rising of this star came at the time of
inundation and the start of the Egyptian New Year.
As a goddess of the
inundation, she was a goddess of fertility. She also was linked to the pharaoh
and his journey in the afterlife.
In the mythology of the NTRs (who would latter be called
gods by the Greeks), the Sopdet star is their solar home. The source of not
only these enlightened being but was viewed as the ultimate source of knowledge.
This star can be seen from almost every inhabited region of Earths surface.
This celestial body was sacred to the Freemason and the
order of the Eastern star.
Even as early as the 1st Dynasty, she was known as 'the
bringer of the new year and the Nile flood'. When Sirius appeared in the sky
each year, the Nile generally started to flood and bring fertility to the land.
The ancient Egyptians connected the two events, and so Sopdet took on the
aspects of a goddess of not only the star and of the inundation, but of the
fertility that came to the land of Egypt with the flood. The flood and the
rising of Sirius also marked the ancient Egyptian New Year, and so she also was
thought of as a goddess of the New Year.
She is depicted as a nude figure wearing a conical white
crown of Lower Egypt surmounted by a star. Late in Egyptian mythology she
becomes largely syncretized with Isis.
heliacal rising of the bright star preceded the usual annual
flooding of the Nile.[8] It was therefore apparently used for the solar civil
calendar which largely superseded the original lunar calendar in the 3rd
millennium BC
During the Old Kingdom, she was an important goddess of the
annual flood and a psychopomp guiding deceased pharaohs through the Egyptian
underworld.
From the Middle Kingdom, Sopdet sometimes appeared as a god
who held up part of Nut (the sky or firmament) with Hathor.
She is also thought to be a guide in the afterlife for the
pharaoh, letting him fly into the sky to join the gods, showing him 'goodly
roads' in the Field of Reeds and helping him become one of the imperishable
stars. She was thought to be living on the horizon, encircled by the Duat.
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