From Sirius to Woolly Mammoths

Living with my kids is like living within an encyclopaedia. At any given time you can be fired with information, on anything from prehistoric civilizations to modern gizmos and everything in between, at dizzying speed.

Every day I am served a glorious cocktail of history, politics, sciences, philosophy, tech, languages and more, with an assortment of elementary level mathematics and scientific nuggets added on top by my youngest. I get glassy eyed and dazed within an hour into this “family time”. My husband usually surrenders long before that.

Apart from these slight side effects, living with curious, well-read kids and teens has its perks.

Like the other day I was reciting surah alNajm and when I reached ayah 49

وأنه هو رب الشعرى

Indeed He is the Lord of Sirius star

It made me wonder why Allah (سبحانه وتعالى) specifically mentions Sirius. There are any number of stars in the sky. Why mention Sirius in this way?

A couple of days after that, for some reason we started discussing stars. And my daughter, with some interjections from my son, led me on a fascinating journey through mystical pages of history, astronomy, and language surrounding Sirius star. How it was thought of as the bearer of scorching heat of desert, how it was feared and worshipped by Egyptians, Arabs and even Greeks. And the very interesting story of how it got its name 1500 years ago in the deserts of Arabia.

It helped me understand the ayaah of surah alNajm so much better. It made me yearn to see the star studded sky as it appeared on the Arabian deserts 1500 years ago.

My mind travelled in the magical lands of history where the intellectual Greeks observed that the appearance of Sirius heralded hot and dry summer and they offered sacrifices to Sirius to bring cool breezes. Where mighty Egyptians worshipped Sirius, or Sopdet as they called it, their goddess of fertility of their lands. Where long robed Arabs sang poetry on cold desert nights around a bonfire, while Sirius burned bright over them. And later when Quran shone bright, like Sirius, in the midst of all ignorance and paganism.

The journey an amazing one, and could have lasted longer. But my son remembered some amazing things about woolly mammoths at a tangent and in a blink we were on an island with woolly mammoths. Or was it Sparta?

P.S. Do go and read this amazing article on the heritage of Arabian astronomy. It not only tells you the Arabian legend on Sirius’s name, it also contains translation of some Arabic poetry and helps you understand Arabs’ fascination with stars and night sky.

It will make you appreciate why Quran mentions stars, night sky and heavenly bodies so many times.

Edited 2021: Since so many people have shown interest in learning more about Sirius star and its significance throughout the history, I am adding a few excerpts from the articles we have read here.

In ancient Egypt, the name Sirius signified its nature as scorching or sparkling. The star was associated with the Egyptian gods Osiris, Sopdet and other gods. Ancient Egyptians noted that Sirius rose just before the sun each year immediately prior to the annual flooding of the Nile River. Although the floods could bring destruction, they also brought new soil and new life. Osiris was an Egyptian god of life, death, fertility and rebirth of plant life along the Nile. Sopdet – who might have an even closer association with the star Sirius – began as an agricultural deity in Egypt, also closely associated with the Nile. The Egyptian new year was celebrated with a festival known as the Coming of Sopdet.

https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/sirius-the-brightest-star

Today, Sirius is nicknamed the “Dog Star” because it is part of the constellation Canis Major, Latin for “the greater dog.” The expression “dog days” refers to the period from July 3 through Aug. 11, when Sirius rises in conjunction with the sun. The ancients felt that the combination of the sun during the day and the star at night was responsible for the extreme heat during mid-summer.

https://www.space.com/21702-sirius-brightest-star.html

Interestingly, totally separate ancient cultures with no apparent communication have related the brlliant Sirius with either a wolf or a dog. In ancient Chaldea (present day Iraq) the star was known as the “Dog Star that Leads”. In ancient China, the star was identified as a heavenly wolf. And in Assyria and Akkadia, it was said to be the “Dog of the Sun”.  To add to the list, North American indigenous tribes have talked of the star in canine terms: the Seri and Tohono O’odham tribes of the southwest describe Sirius as a “dog that follows mountain sheep”, while the Cherokee paired Sirius with Antares as a dog-star guardian of the “Path of Souls”. The Skidi tribe of Nebraska knew it as the “Wolf Star”, while further north, the Alaskan Inuit of the Bering Strait called it “Moon Dog”.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/what-so-special-about-sirius-dog-star-009232