Sopdet

Sopdet starts the year. Sirius drops below the horizon for about seventy days and then comes back, rising just ahead of the sun, and in Egypt that morning fell near the start of the inundation — so the brightest star in the sky was also the annual announcement that the country was about to be fed. The calendar was dated from it. Seventy days is also how long an embalming takes, which is not a coincidence: the star goes away, stays away the proper length of time, and comes back, and a body is supposed to do the same.

Children

• Sopdu

Domains

• stars
• inundation

Powers

• to reappear at dawn after seventy days and open the year

Relations

• spouse: SahSirius beside Orion, which is where they are in the sky: Sah rises and Sopdet follows him up.Pyramid Texts, which set Sopdet beside Sah as a celestial pair and give Sopdu as their son. (primary)
• mother of: SopduMother of Sopdu, whose name shares her 'sharp' root.Pyramid Texts, giving Sopdu as the son of Sopdet and Sah. (primary)

Sources

• Sopdet is the Egyptian personification of Sirius, whose heliacal rising opened the year and announced the inundation, conflated with Isis and paired with Sah as the parents of Sopdu.: Pyramid Texts. (primary); Reference treatments of Sopdet, of Sirius and of the Egyptian calendar. (secondary)