Secret_History

436 The Secret History of the World
the Hellenistic or Roman period and in Hellenistic times the Egyptian decans were
brought into a fixed relation to the Babylonian zodiac, which is attested in Egypt
only since the reign of Alexander’s successors.
In other words, the “occult secrets” generally attributed to the Egyptians, must
actually belong to the Greeks.
However, there is something just a little bit deeper here that I would like to point
out. As Neugebauer says, the Egyptians of historical times were really
scientifically illiterate. So much so that their influence was inhibiting upon
mathematics and science. But we still have that most astonishing fact that they
came up with what Neugebauer declares to be the most sensible calendar ever
devised. Even the Babylonians, whose mathematics sends Neugebauer into
raptures, did not have so clever a calendar. We find ourselves asking: where did
the Egyptians get this calendar?
In an attempt to come to some understanding of this matter of Sothis, (which
actually is the Greek name for Sirius, and it is an assumption that the word
transliterated from the Egyptian texts is, actually, Sothis or Sirius), I undertook a
comparative reading of Faulkner’s translation of the Ancient Egyptian Pyramid
Texts. Indeed, I am not an Egyptologist nor an expert in these matters, but I
wondered if I would notice anything at all with my “beginner’s mind”, assuming
that the translator dealt honestly with his text. Reading every reference to the word
transliterated into English as “spdt”, that is then translated as Sothis, brought me
face to face with a number of interesting problems.
If we remember that Sirius is also supposed to represent Isis, we notice first of
all that the Egyptians had no problem specifying Isis when they wanted to,
sometimes in the same passage where Sothis is mentioned. In Utterance 216 of the
Pyramid Texts, it is translated, “Sothis is swallowed up by the Netherworld, Pure
and living in the horizon”. However, there is a footnote that says: “Despite the
lack of correct gender ... in a triple repetition of the phrase, the scribe has ignored
the discrepancy of gender in the case of Sothis”. 329
In other words... Sothis is described in words of male gender and the translator
is having to deal with this problem.
Apparently this gender issue pops up several more times, and the footnote
directs us to a paper in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, volume 25, p. 159.
Repeatedly the word spdt is translated as “my sister is Sothis...” after which, we
are again referred to the above paper, p. 153, which suggests that in each of these
instances, the problem with that pesky male gender keeps popping up.
In Utterance 366, we find Isis and Sothis mentioned together in a strange way:
[Osiris is being addressed]
329 Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, (Aris and Phillips. 1969)