The unpopularity of this star was due to the fact that during the hottest days of July it rose just before the sun and preceded that luminary all day long in his pathway through the heavens. Not knowing that Sirius lay many millions of millions of miles beyond our solar system, they quite naturally supposed that his bright rays blended with those of the sun, greatly intensifying the heat. Thus Sirius caused the hottest season of the year and all the dried fields, mad dogs, plagues and fevers were attributed to its malignant influence. Since the huge star belonged to the constellation of Canis Major, the Great Dog, it was called the "Dog Star" and these hot, sultry days, the "dog-days." The dog-days lasted for about 40 days, extending from 20 days before the heliacal rising of the Dog-star Sirius to 20 days after. Owing to the precession of the equinoxes, the heliacal rising of Sirius is different from what it was to the ancients and the dog-days are now counted from the 3rd of July to the 11th of August. Unlike the Greeks, the ancient Egyptians held Sirius in the highest esteem and built splendid temples in its honor in the valley of the Nile. J. Norman Lockyer has made an extensive study of Egyptian temples and has described them most interestingly in his book "The Dawn of Astronomy." During his explorations he found seven temples which were constructed solely to guide the light of Sirius through an opening in the side of the temple, down a long hallway to a point on the central altar. Olcott in "Star Lore of All Ages" visualizes the following beautiful scene in the most notable of these, the temple of Isis at Denerah: "Here the rising beams of Sirius flashed down a long vista of massive pylons and illuminated the inner recesses of the temple. What a wonderful scene there must have been enacted within that darkened edifice, when, in the presence of a vast multitude silent in meditation, there suddenly appeared a gleam of silver light, that laved the marble altar in a refulgence born of the infinite, a beam, altho' the watchers knew it not, that had started on its earthward journey 8½ years before it greeted their eyes." Why did the Egyptians reverence this star and hold it sacred while the ancient Greeks watched the same heliacal rising and vehemently denounced it for journeying so close to the sun at a season when additional heat was least desired? The Egyptians thought little about the heat, but with the appearance of this star just before the rising of the sun they knew that the season had arrived for the annual overflow of the Nile. "Far in the south the daring waters rise, As in disdain of Cancer's burning skies; Thence, with a downward course, then seek the main, Direct against the lazy northern wain." --_Lucan's Pharsalia._