A personal history and guide to the ritual site of Abydos, on the West bank of the Nile, which flourished from the Predynastic period until Christian times (c. 4000 BC to AD 641). The author moved to Egypt in 1933 and was involved in excavations with a number of Egyptian archaeologists.

A special connection with ancient Egypt drew Omm Sety to Egypt, where she studied with the great Egyptologists Selim Hassan and Ahmed Fakhry. For more than four decades she made her home in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Giza and in the mudbrick village surrounding the Temple of Sety I at Abydos. For her, there was no separation between ancient and modern Egypt. Pictures on tomb walls illustrated the games children played in the streets in front of her house. The texts she translated from the temple walls shed light on the origins of the social customs of her Egyptian neighbors. For another four decades this book, which deserves to be called Omm Sety's life work, remained hidden away. Now Nicole B. Hansen, an Egyptologist who specializes in connections between ancient and modern Egypt, brings this work to light in an annotated edition with extensive notes and bibliography, illustrated with Omm Sety's own drawings. It features a foreword by Kent R. Weeks, who rediscovered KV5 in the Valley of the Kings, and an introduction by Walter A. Fairservis, the late director of the Hierakonpolis Project. For Egyptologists, this book includes explanations of texts from the Pyramid Texts to Herodotus as well as ancient Egyptian art. For anthropologists, it represents the results of a lifetime of unbridled participant-observation, during which Omm Sety used folk treatments to cure her ills and agreed to serve as a medium for a spirit during a magic ritual. For those interested in Omm Sety herself, this book provides new insights into her life, the people she knew and the places she lived.

The story of one woman's search for the previous life she led in ancient Egypt, written by a Rolling Stone and New Yorker journalist.

Revelations in Egyptology, based on the diaries of Dorothy Eady, better known as Omm Sety. Omm Sety, a brilliant, adventuring Englishwoman, worked under some of the greatest Egyptologists of the 20th century and "saw" into the past. Hers is a story of ancient love - of gods, pyramids, pharaohs and queens, and treasures that wait beneath the sand. In Omm Sety's Egypt, the authors present never-before-seen episodes from her truly incredible life, including important revelations about Egypt's lost history. Hanny el Zeini was her close friend during the many years she lived in the ancient holy city of Abydos. It was a friendship filled with star-lit evenings among the ruins of ancient temples, speaking of the mysteries of this land they both loved. Dr. el Zeini was her trusted confidant to whom she revealed her secret other life in 19th Dynasty Egypt. Shortly before her death in 1981, she gave him her diaries, which chronicled her life in two worlds. Drawing on Omm Sety's diaries and on hundreds of hours of recorded conversations and Dr. el Zeini's own writings, co-author Catherine Dees brings this extraordinary material together into a story that asks the reader to suspend disbelief and enter into the mystery that was Omm Sety.

From Herodotus's day to the present political upheavals, the steady flow of the Nile has been Egypt's heartbeat. It has shaped its geography, controlled its economy and moulded its civilisation. The same stretch of water which conveyed Pharaonic battleships, Ptolemaic grain ships, Roman troop-carriers and Victorian steamers today carries modern-day tourists past bankside settlements in which rural life – fishing, farming, flooding – continues much as it has for millennia. At this most critical juncture in the country's history, foremost Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes us on a journey up the Nile, north from Lake Victoria, from Cataract to Cataract, past the Aswan Dam, to the delta. The country is a palimpsest, every age has left its trace: as we pass the Nilometer on the island of Elephantine which since the days of the Pharaohs has measured the height of Nile floodwaters to predict the following season's agricultural yield and set the parameters for the entire Egyptian economy, the wonders of Giza which bear the scars of assault by nineteenth-century archaeologists and the modern-day unbridled urban expansion of Cairo – and in Egypt's earliest art (prehistoric images of fish-traps carved into cliffs) and the Arab Spring (fought on the bridges of Cairo) – the Nile is our guide to understanding the past and present of this unique, chaotic, vital, conservative yet rapidly changing land.

This groundbreaking study catalogs Seti I's monuments and restorations, shedding new light on the internal chronology and history of the reign, the royal succession in the early Nineteenth Dynasty, the extent of Seti's building program and its place in history.

*Includes pictures *Includes ancient accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Africa may have given rise to the first human beings, and Egypt probably gave rise to the first great civilizations, which continue to fascinate modern societies across the globe nearly 5,000 years later. From the Library and Lighthouse of Alexandria to the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Ancient Egyptians produced several wonders of the world, revolutionized architecture and construction, created some of the world's first systems of mathematics and medicine, and established language and art that spread across the known world. With world-famous leaders like King Tut and Cleopatra, it's no wonder that today's world has so many Egyptologists. In ancient Egypt, cities held political and religious significance, which meant that if the political or religious tides changed, so too could the fortunes of particular cities. Memphis is perhaps the best known of ancient Egypt's cities because it was fortunate enough to be the political capital of the Egyptian state for most of its history. Hundreds of miles to Memphis' south, Thebes became an important city during the Middle Kingdom and its stature grew during the New Kingdom when many of the pharaohs came from there and the national god, Amun, had its cult center in the city. Others cities, such as Tanis and Sais, were important for much shorter periods in Egyptian history. The city of Abju, which was known as Abydus to the Greeks, and later became known simply as "Abydos" had a history that was as long as Memphis', and although its influence on pharaonic culture may not have been as apparent, it was no less profound. The city of Abydos was the most important political city in ancient Egypt's "Archaic" or Early Dynastic Period, which encompassed the first two dynasties of Egyptian history (ca. 3100-2650 BC). All of the kings of the First Dynasty and two of the kings of the Second Dynasty are believed to have resided in the nearby, but as of yet unlocated, city of Thinis and were buried in the necropolis of Abydos, making it one of the holiest sites in early pharaonic history. After the Archaic Period, Abydos lost much of its political influence to Memphis, Thebes, and other cities, but retained its significance by becoming an important religious center. Beginning in the Old Kingdom (ca. 2686-2181 BC), the first major temples were built near the city, attracting priests and pilgrims alike, but it was in the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2055-1650 BC) when Abydos became the center of the Osiris cult. As the importance and popularity of Osiris grew throughout Egypt, so too did the city. Several kings in the New Kingdom (ca. 1550-1069 BC) and Late Period built mortuary temples to their own cults and added to the existing monuments to Osiris in order to ensure their immortality and to prove their piousness to their people. Eventually, though, when the Greeks took control of Egypt, the importance of Abydos waned and so too did its size. Abydos: The History and Legacy of the Ancient Egyptian Holy City and Burial Site examines the history of the city, and what life and death were like there. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about Abydos like never before.

Reproduction of the original: The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia by Archibald Henry Sayce

1290 BC in the Egyptian city of Abydos, the young priestess Bentreshy is renowned for her spiritual powers. But when she begins an illicit love affair with King Sety I, her spiritual life is thrown into turmoil. By defying temple protocol the pair pit themselves against the powerful priesthood, as King Sety believes they are the incarnation of Isis and Osiris, the divine couple who first ruled Egypt. 3000 years later Dorothy Eady is born into an Edwardian family in London. She begins to remember a past life, when she lived in a beautiful temple as a follower of Isis. Only Dr Budge, a Keeper at the British Museum, believes her story and helps her unravel the past. Dorothy realises she must return to Abydos, where the truth lies hidden in the mysterious temple, revealing a past life that mirrors her own modern existence, where ancient secrets are about to change her destiny.