CT: "Orion (mentioned in the Pyramid Texts as Sah, the 'Father of the Gods')"

Morph: "In the opinion of some..."



Lets see who the "some" are:


Two translations of the Pyramid Texts commonly in use today are Faulkner (1969) and Allen (2005) - both translate sAH - Orion.

In his Glossary Allen has: "Orion (sAH). Identical with the modern constellation, associated with Osiris."


Neugebauer and Parker's identification of Sah with the constellation Orion, and spdt with Sirius:

"...from the decanal lists we know that Sah, divided into three or four decans, rose heliacally before and not after, Sirius..........We know furthermore from the names of the decans of Sah, ‘upper arm’, ‘lower arm’, ‘arm’, etc., that Sah was a human figure which is in any case graphically portrayed for us on the transverse strips of the coffin clocks and on the astronomical ceilings, such as Senmut. Given the identification of spd with Sirius, which is certain, and the fact that the decans of Sah immediately precede that of spd in the lists, the identification of Sah with Orion, whose stars rise heliacally immediately preceding Sirius, must be taken as likely in the highest degree. That does not mean, however, that it is possible to equate specific stars in the constellation with specific decans. We are not aware of exactly how the Egyptians fitted their conception of the figure of Sah to the constellation, nor of the history of the decanal shifts in names and probably in figure-conception through the centuries." ('Egyptian Astronomical Texts' Vol 1, N&P 1960:25)


The text accompanying the figure of Sah on Middle Kingdom coffin lids, reads: "Sah in the southern sky. O Sah turn your head so that you may see Osiris N."


Sah had three or 4 decan stars, so it is most likely a star pattern; it rose in the east and set in the west, and was "in the southern sky". Its rose just before Sirius, the brightest star in our sky after the sun - with all these clues, sAH can be narrowed down with some degree of certainty to Orion, especially as Orion is a striking, easily recognizable large star pattern crossing the southern sky.


At least one scholar (K. Locher) believes the 3-star asterism in the centre of Orion was the 'crown' of Sah, but Sah is still linked with Orion.


Sah could be written simply with the D61 triliteral sAH without phonetic complements, and its the hieroglyph, D61 that is drawn over the head of the Sah figure holding the was-sceptre on MK coffin lids. D61 seems to represent 3 short flagpoles on a sled - flagpole (R8) was the ideogram for 'god' (nTr).


Do you know of any scholars who believe that Sah was not associated with Orion?

Bradshaw in his 1997 book 'The Night Sky in Egyptian Mythology', proposed that Sah and Sopdet were circumpolar stars in the northern sky, but he also believed Ra was a circumpolar star and not the sun as is commonly thought, so I doubt his ideas are taken very seriously today.

CT