This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Egyptian Sky gathers two figures from the decan system, the thirty six star groups Egyptian astronomers used to tell the hours of the night, one tied to the dead king's afterlife and one to the ritual that let him eat and speak.
Sah occupies the stars the Greek list calls Orion and is identified with Osiris. The Pyramid Texts place the dead king among the stars in Sah's company, and his heliacal rising is bound up with the annual return of Sopdet, the star Sirius, whose reappearance announced the Nile flood. Egyptian star ceilings show Sah as a striding figure looking back over his shoulder with a sceptre, usually paired with Sopdet behind him as a woman or a cow bearing a star between her horns; Sah and Sopdet together are the two best identified figures in the decan scheme.
Meskhetiu, the foreleg, occupies the stars the Greek list calls the Great Bear and is drawn on star ceilings as the severed foreleg of a bull, connected with the god Set and with the opening of the mouth ceremony, in which an adze of that same shape is touched to the mummy's face so the dead may eat and speak. Its stars never set at the latitude of Egypt, and the imperishable stars circling the pole are where the dead king goes, the same destination Sah's company promises from the other side of the sky.