The dog days are upon us. The hot, torrid days of July and August when the air itself is thick with heat and everything seems to stop.
The term comes from the Greek and Romans: kynades hemerai and dies caniculares (literally the puppy days). They refer to the re-emergence of the dog star, Sirius, in mid-July.
Sirius (actually a double star) is one of the brightest stars in the night sky. It is part of the constellation Canis Major, the dog belonging to Orion.
The Romans traditionally saw these as bad days. Pliny (c. 23 – 79 CE) reports that there was an increase of rabies during the dog days (Nat. 8.63). If the unusually hot days lead to stupor and heightened stress in humans, and could be risky for plants, it was even more unpleasant for dogs, who were sacrificed to prevent crops drying out. Several writers describe sacrifices taking place over summer. The poet Ovid (who dated the sacrifice to April) quotes a priest:
You ask why we offer an odd sacrifice
Ovid, Fasti, Book IV
In these rites’ (I had asked) ‘then learn the reason …
This dog is set on the altar to signify the starry one,
And the only reason for it is because of the name.’
Even today, the ‘dog days’ often have an ominous meaning.
Yet this was only one interpretation in antiquity.
In Egypt, the rising of Sopdet (the Egyptian name for Sirius) had long been associated with the annual Nile Flood, which helped irrigate and nutriate the agricultural land of the Nile Valley. The flood was symbolically linked to cosmic order in both a divine and more worldly sense: the level of the flood affected the following harvest. Too high or too low and the crops would be ruined, but the right level meant a good harvest. Nilometers were used to help administrators predict and manage the harvest. It was an important period in the Egyptian year.
During the Pharaonic period Sopdet was often depicted as a woman with a star above her head. Later on, during the Ptolemaic period, she could also be depicted as a cow with the star between her horns (as at the temple of Khnum at Esna, 246 – 180 BCE, and the temple of Horus at Edfou, 145-116 BCE).
As part of a long trend from the New Kingdom onwards and as she spread across the Mediterranean, Isis took over the roles of several Egyptian goddesses, including Sopdet. At the Temple of Dendur, Isis is said to be ‘the one who appears as Sopdet’, while in a first person hymn found in Kyme in Turkey (1st century BCE), she says ‘I am she that rises in the Dog Star’. An obelisk erected in Beneventum in Italy, dedicated to the emperor Domitian (reigned 81 – 96 CE), has hieroglyphs linking Isis with Sothis.
It is only from the Roman period however, that we have visual evidence for a unique figure called ‘Isis-Sothis’, which depicts the goddess riding a dog. (Sothis is the Greek name for Sirius.) Several coins survive which show this image.
The most famous example of this image would have been the one above the main entrance to her temple in the Field of Mars in Rome. A coin from the reign of Vespasian (69 – 79 CE) depicts this temple, while Dio Cassius reports a (surely) apocryphal prodigy preceding the death of the emperor Elgabalus in 222 CE:
Portents had been taking place in Rome, one of them being given by the statue of Isis, who is represented as riding on a dog above the pediment of her temple; for she turned her face toward the interior of the temple [presumably in shame at the crimes of the emperor].
Dio Cassius LXXIX 10
An Isis Temple in Szombathely, Hungary also contained a relief depicting the goddess riding on a dog, which has survived. (This book cover is a good picture.) We might speculate that there were more copies of this image in antiquity.
Harpocrates, the son of Isis, is sometimes shown next to a dog. There is some ambiguity on how to identify this dog, but when he is riding the dog, I think we can safely associate it with Sothis as well.
Terracotta figurines of dogs have also been found across the Roman world. Again, identification is not as easy as we might hope. If the dog has a small star above his head, it’s a safe assumption to identify it with Sothis. But what about dogs without the star? Do they stand in for another figure or are they just nice images or toys? These are often called ‘Sothis dogs’, but I would tend to be more cautious in associating these with the dog star, especially when they are often similar to Meletian dogs, ancient lap dogs commonly depicted.
The images of Egyptian deities with the dog are an interesting merger of religious traditions within the Roman world.
Gisele Clerc argued this style of image may come from outside either the Egyptian, Greek or Roman traditions. Among other precursors, she points out that Dea Caelestis, a Carthaginian goddess introduced to Rome during the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BCE) when Rome was at war with Carthage, was often depicted riding a lion.
This all suggests a more fluid understanding of divinity that transcends cultural difference, a melting of the hard edges between separate gods.
As you enjoy the hot weather this year, it’s worth reflecting on the complex and long history of the ‘dog days’ and the lessons we can still learn from the ancients.
Rhakotis 