Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/389

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Orion, the Giant Hunter
281
When with fierce winds Orion arrived
Hath vexed the Red Sea coast.

Hesiod also lays it down that the rising of Orion is the season for threshing:

Forget not when Orion first appears
To make your servants thresh the sacred ears;

and points to the time when Orion is in the mid-heavens as proper for the vintage. He also directs the husbandmen to plough at the setting of this constellation, and warns navigators to avoid the dangers of the sea, when the Pleiades, flying from Orion, are lost in the waves.

The Syrians and Arabians knew Orion as "the Giant." To the early Arabs, Orion was "Al-Jauzah," often erroneously translated "Giant," says Allen. Originally this was the term used for a black sheep with a white spot in the middle of the body, and this may have become the designation for the middle figure of the heavens, which, from its pre-eminent brilliancy, always has been a centre of attraction.

In Egypt, the soul of Osiris was said to rest in the constellation Orion, and in the round zodiac of the temple of Denderah there is a mythological figure of a cow in a boat identified as Sirius, and near it another mythological figure which has been proved, according to Lockyer, to represent the constellation Orion.

Allen says that the Egyptians represented Orion as Horus, the young or rising sun, in a boat surmounted by stars, and as "Sahu" in the great Ramesseum of Thebes, about 3285 b.c.

Orion was an extremely important constellation in Egypt, because it preceded and announced the approaching rise of Sirius, which in turn heralded the inundation of the Nile.

According to a Jewish tradition, this constellation was appropriated to himself by a particularly mighty man. The Hebrews knew Orion as "the Giant," bound to the