William Tyler Olcott

“ There is an attraction about these solitary bright stars that is almost mystical, their very loneliness lending interest to the view, as when one watches some distant snow-clad peak gleaming in the rays of sunset after all the lower mountains have sunk into the blue shadows of coming night. ”

“ A Precessional globe enables us to see the star groups as they appeared at any period, and taking the date Maunder suggests, 2700 b.c., as the approximate time when the constellations were designed, and 40 degrees north latitude as the probable abode of those who planned them, we find in the grouping of the serpentine constellational figures several significant facts. The far-extended Hydra crawls along his full length, "going on his belly." ”

“ Brown claims that Hydra is a variant reduplication of Cetus, the storm and ocean monster attacked by the sun-god, and in an ancient Akkadian hymn it is referred to as bearing the yoke on its seven heads.
The ancients perceived an analogy between a quick flowing river, and the swift gliding of a huge glistening serpent, and so, as Maunder says, we arrive at the idea of the River of the Snake, which develops into an ocean stream. The Egyptians at one time regarded this constellation as the
Photo by Prof. ”