The king was Akhenaten; his queen was Nefertiti. Later pages will speak more about this complex man and his reign, and about the mysterious, powerful Nefertiti. After he died, his successors referred to him only as the criminal or the heretic, and they lost no time undoing the effects of his religious revolution.
Into this moment in Egypt’s history came a king named Sety, a brilliant man of restless energy. His cartouche name was Men-Maat-Ra, meaning Enduring-is-the-Truth-of-Ra. By nature and by heritage he was a military man, following in the steps of his father, Ramesses I, and before that, the kingship of the admirable general, Horemheb. Sety’s reign had one overarching theme: to put right what had been disturbed, by securing the outposts of empire and restoring equilibrium to Egyptian life at home. He understood very well the psychological necessity of religious tradition in the lives of his people, and so he sponsored magnificent additions to Amun’s great temple at Thebes, and built other striking monuments and temples, all to give honor to the old gods. The most beautiful of these would be in Abydos – and for good reason.
Abydos
When Omm Sety tried to explain to the incredulous clerk at the Cairo train station that Abydos was the most important place in Egypt, it was a true statement – except that it was a few thousand years late.
No one really knows when this piece of fertile land at the desert’s edge became the spiritual heart of ancient Egypt. To someone living in those times it seemed as if it had always been so. Lying on the western side of the Nile 90 miles north of Luxor (ancient Thebes), Abydos is held within the curved embrace of a high limestone mountain. Its two jutting projections still bear the old names Lord of Offerings and Lady of Life. Since pre-dynastic times there had been burials here, and by the earliest dynasties kings and nobles were building their tombs and monuments in the shadow of the holy mountain. Why did they choose this place over other sacred locations in Egypt? It may have been because of the deep notch in the mountain’s silhouette – Pega, the gateway to the West, the land of the dead. But more than anything, they chose Abydos because the tomb of their savior-god Osiris was here.
Every Egyptian child knew the story: Osiris had once lived on earth as a man, born of Earth and Sky. He brought civilization to the people of the Nile and taught them agriculture, writing, the great laws of life and the worship of the gods. He was their beloved king and he was everything that was good and compassionate, as was his beautiful sister-wife Isis, mistress of healing and magic. There was another sister, the protective goddess Nephthys.
But in the Black Land such goodness could not exist without the challenge of the forces of darkness. Osiris had a brother, Set, who out of anger and jealousy arranged to have him killed on the banks of the Nile at Abydos. His body was cut up into many parts and strewn over the length of the land, and the triumphant Set took his brother’s throne. Meanwhile, the grieving Isis was working a great magic to bring her husband back to life. Yet even with the most powerful magic Osiris could only stay on earth long enough for his son Horus to be conceived. With the final death of his body, Osiris went on to become lord of the Underworld and judge of souls, but his essence would be held within his tomb at Abydos (one version of the story says that only the head of Osiris was entombed there). Horus-the-Son was to live forever to avenge his father’s death and continue the battle against Set’s forces of chaos.
This allegory of good and evil, death and resurrection and the salvation of souls was carried deep in the psyche of the Egyptian people. Every year, pilgrims from every part of Egypt streamed into Abydos for the Feast of Osiris to witness a sacred seven-day mystery pageant, a re-enactment of the life, death and resurrection of the god. It climaxed with a great battle between Horus and Set, which Horus always won, to the wild cheers of those who participated and watched.
At the end of the pageant, as Omm Sety described it, there was loud rejoicing, with songs of triumph. “The actual death and resurrection of Osiris took place inside,” she explained from her own remembrance, “and only the priests and priestesses were present. The part of Osiris was never played by a person, but a life-sized wooden statue. Then the god was carried outside, upright, as a living god rather than as a dead mummy. There came the words, Osiris, our hope, Osiris, Osiris! as the people greeted their risen god.”
The parts of the other gods were played by priests and priestesses specially trained for their privileged roles in the mystery play. A priestess playing Isis, for instance, might apprentice for years to perfect the gestures and song of the Lament for Osiris, in which she grieves for her murdered husband and entreats him to return to her. With her in grief is her faithful sister Nephthys, and together they cry out for Osiris to return.
Each year began with this highly ritualized celebration of the mystery of the Holy Family of Egypt, and each year Osiris died and rose again as a promise to all who witnessed that they too could overcome death and be as gods.
A pilgrimage to Abydos was a chance to present one’s soul to Osiris and be washed clean again. If you had the good fortune to die at that moment, you were doubly blessed. People left instructions in their wills that their hearts were to be buried at Abydos, and if that were not possible then a stone monument, a cenotaph, would be erected instead. Down through the ages, the sacred burial grounds of Abydos became filled with cenotaphs of kings and nobles and ordinary people wishing for an eternity with their beloved god.
It was natural that Sety would want to add to the monuments in such a holy place, especially after the years of Akhenaten’s great heresy. Whenever Sety was not occupied on the eastern frontiers, he visited his new temple to oversee its progress. Nearby, he erected a small palace retreat for himself, which he named Heartsease, a poignant choice for someone whose personal life had seen its full measure of heartache and betrayal.
He was a man of greatness and valor, but he was also a man of sorrows whose rash heart led him one fateful day to disturb the Order-of-Things – not in the grave manner of the Heretic, but a disturbance nonetheless. He knew that for the sin of entering into a forbidden love he had brought down upon himself the punishment of the gods.
Sety’s sin is not to be found in history books, it probably never will – but it plays an important part in our story, for it was the cause of his 3300-year search for a young temple priestess named Bentreshyt, and for atonement in the holy city of Abydos.
This is a story about Egypt – about a particular moment in its long history, and how that moment cast its shadow forward across time.*
*modern Tell el-Amarna
*Note: Throughout the book, Omm Sety’s quoted words are taken from conversations I and others had with her, from her personal notes and diaries, and from articles she wrote.
TWO
Dorothy
“‘But when I grow up,’ I told him,‘I’m going to live in Egypt.’” OS
Nothing about Omm Sety was ever ordinary – not her exuberant laugh, her questing mind, or her larger-than-life presence. Even if she had had no psychic connection at all with the far past, her intellect alone would have left a memorable legacy. That legacy will feature prominently in our book. But there are certain things about her life that should be spoken of first.
In the early years of our friendship I knew very little about Omm Sety’s life before Egypt. I knew that her father, Reuben Eady, had