Within a few months of Omm Sety’s arrival in Abydos I was realizing my own long-held dream. I was 38 and had just been named chairman of the Egyptian Sugar and Distillery Company. My family and I had taken up residence in the company’s main compound at Nag-Hamadi, only a short drive from Abydos. Because I had always had a keen interest in archaeology and personally knew many of the working archaeologists and their projects, I was eager to explore the latest excavations at Abydos. But it wasn’t until the end of that year that I could take time away from my new job.
By then I had already heard of Omm Sety. News travels fast in the Egyptian countryside. This was during the troubling period of the Suez Canal Crisis, when there was a great deal of anti-British sentiment. One of the drivers for our company, who lived in a village close to Abydos, came to me with the story that a khawagaya from England had joined a demonstration of young students who were shouting anti-British slogans. This sounded quite incredible. I assumed the woman must be one of those cranks who sometimes get an infatuation with Egypt and vent their feelings in the most bizarre style; although it did intrigue me to learn that this woman had recently left the comforts and good life of Cairo to come and settle in such an isolated and lonely place.
What I encountered on my first visit to Abydos that December was hardly a crank, but a sharp-witted, vital woman with blue eyes and light blond hair. And wonderfully funny. The day I arrived she lost no time giving me her opinion about the British, which included some choice and very earthy Arabic swear words. I had never met anyone quite like her.
She had a makeshift office inside the Sety Temple where her job was sorting and fitting together thousands of inscribed stone fragments and making accurate drawings of them all. As I looked at the colossal heap of fragments I didn’t envy her the task, but she seemed quite happy. At that time the Sety Temple was in a sorry state of disrepair, as was the adjacent ruin known as the Osirion, an underground structure of austere beauty and mysterious origin. To anyone who understood the history and significance of Abydos, the condition of its principal monuments was heartbreaking. The Sety Temple contained some of the most sublimely beautiful incised wall art found anywhere in Egypt, and here it sat, roofless and open to the elements. It was all but forgotten. In time, Omm Sety would single-handedly change all that.
Our early meetings were brief and far apart, but eventually I was able to go to Abydos once or twice a month. Because of Omm Sety’s presence and encyclopedic knowledge of the Sety Temple I always came away knowing more than when I arrived.
Our common point of interest was our fascination with Egypt’s lost past. It was a past to which she seemed to have unusual access – something I did not understand about her at first, since she was not a university-trained Egyptologist. I did not yet know that some of her easy familiarity with New Kingdom history and details of the original temple architecture were a result of her relationship with the very man who had built the temple – Sety I, the great 19th Dynasty pharaoh.
It was many years into our friendship before she told me about the secret side of her life, knowing how peculiar I would find it. For a long time I was the only other person who knew. At first I couldn’t let myself believe it, even though I considered Omm Sety to be the most transparently truthful person I had ever known. Reincarnation was not a new concept to me, but her situation was so unusual that I had to think about it for quite some time.
In many ways she appeared to be living more in the past than the present – completely naturally and without affectation. I saw that she always removed her shoes upon entering the temple, and that she never missed a day of placing offerings in the shrines of Isis and Osiris, even when she was quite ill. She had made a religious calendar for herself that gave the proper prayers and offerings for each day of the ancient Egyptian year. She knew the time-honored folk practices – some would call it magic – for assisting women in childbirth and for protecting the village children from scorpions. All of this I saw and respected.
As the years passed, I grew concerned that much of what she knew would be lost. Even though bits and pieces of her story were known to some of her closer friends, no one knew it all. I encouraged her to begin keeping a personal diary of Sety’s nighttime visits and their wide-ranging conversations – which included revelations about some of the most recognizable royal names in Egyptian history: Nefertiti, Akhenaten, Hatshepsut, Sneferu, Ramesses II, Queen Tiy; and of course, Sety himself. I also began bringing my tape recorder with me when I dropped in. I felt it was important to capture this living archive of knowledge about Egypt’s past, not only for my own curiosity, but for posterity and for a new generation of Egyptologists to consider.
She developed the habit of sending me her diaries and extensive notes at the end of each year. After her heart attack in 1972 she had become reluctant to leave her personal writings in her home, should anything happen to her. If I was abroad or in Cairo she would send them through my driver or a trusted friend.
The tapes and diaries preserved the record of an extraordinary life, but beyond that, they gave important clues to some of the puzzling unknowns of Egyptian history. In the 25 years since her death, new discoveries have validated many of her insights. I am not surprised; I expect that more will come.
By the end of her life she had a worldwide roster of friends and admirers, and tourists were streaming to Abydos. Sadly, she died just a few days before the BBC aired its documentary about her, Omm Sety and Her Egypt. Her passing was noted in the Times of London and in other newspapers around the world.
Today, when I listen to the tapes of our many conversations, her vivid personality fills the room and I see us sitting again at the edge of the Osirion on a warm Egyptian afternoon, speaking of ancient things. We are in a timeless state. I hear her clear voice describing what she believes to be the location of a great Hall of Records at Luxor. I hear us engaged in one of our heated debates about the pharaoh Akhenaten, a man she thoroughly disdained for throwing over the old religion and weakening the empire. And then I hear her in a calmer mood saying matter-of-factly, “I know where the tomb of Nefertiti exists.”
When I open the pages of her diaries, I find evidence of a love that is beyond our normal definition of it: His Majesty came again last night. I was asleep and he woke me with many kisses.… Here was Sety, apparently flesh and blood, visiting his lover in her tiny garden, coming to her from his abode in Amenti, the strange interpenetrating world beyond that somehow allowed them to touch. And here was Omm Sety, a woman well past middle age, whom Sety still saw as the young girl he loved and lost and found again.
A number of years ago I had the privilege of collaborating with journalist and author Jonathan Cott on a book about Omm Sety’s life.* But, as always with a life so complex and layered, there is more to be told. In Omm Sety’s case, I feel I owe it to her and to history to tell the rest of her story, especially as it relates to the unsolved mysteries of Egypt’s past. I am joined in this present book by Catherine Dees, a friend and writer who shares my deep love of Egypt.
Our own friendship extends back nearly twenty years to a dinner party in Cairo where we were seated next to each other at a table with several Egyptologists, whom I knew very well. Catherine had been to Egypt twice before and was doing research for a historical novel. As she jokingly told my wife and me that evening, she was looking for an excuse to stay in Egypt and not have to return home to the “real world.”
At one point the conversation around us turned to the frustrating problems of archaeological exploration and the usefulness of some of the modern non-invasive techniques. A Japanese team had just been in Cairo to scan the Great Pyramid with a sophisticated sensing device, looking for hidden chambers.
One of the Egyptologists, an Englishman, made a doubting face. “If Omm Sety were still here I’d take her word for where things can be found, any day, over the most state-of-the-art equipment out there.” Others nodded.
It was a private opinion given in a private setting. Such blasphemy would never be uttered in public, no matter how much these scholarly men might have admired