“After that,” she told me, “I was always longing for him to come again. As I got a bit older I used to go to spiritualists, trying to get in touch with him. This went on and on and on, until I must have been 26 or 27 – always searching, always hoping he would come again. People in these spiritualist societies with whom I spoke about it said it’s not a king, it’s an evil spirit, and things like that – but I knew it wasn’t. I was never persuaded that it was an evil spirit, but I did begin to think maybe it was just to be that one occurrence.
“I did know I’d always been attracted to Sety, and I’d always been attracted to this place, to Abydos, since I was a very, very small child, before I even knew who built it. I mean, I was drawn to this temple. And that’s why, when men came to ask to marry me and asked my father, I would never accept. I was always looking for this one man. I never fell in love – I thought, oh, they don’t make them like that any more!”
Without a doubt Dorothy loved this man, but why? And why had he come to her that one night and not again? The answers would elude her for a while yet, until after she had left England. For the moment she would have to be content with what was written in her scholarly books, which she scoured for clues among the scattered facts of Sety’s life.
*as quoted in The Search for Omm Sety, by Jonathan Cott
THREE
Sety
“He appears not so much preserved as sleeping –but sleeping in the way that a leopard might…”
How Sety became a pharaoh of Egypt is a tale of the ebb and flow of dynastic fortunes. He was born towards the end of the 18th Dynasty, a golden age of expansion and empire lasting from 1550 – 1319 BC. In the beginning it was a dynasty of extraordinary exploration, temple building and high art, presided over by kings named Ahmose, Thutmosis and Amenhotep, and the female pharaoh Hatshepsut. A seemingly endless tide of tribute flowed into the royal coffers from Egypt’s vassal states, which stretched from Nubia in the south to the Euphrates in the east.
And then, two hundred years into this brilliant age, around the time that Sety was born, the vital energy of the empire suddenly made a dramatic shift with the rise of Amenhotep III’s son, Akhenaten. Whatever Akhenaten was – religious zealot or visionary – he was responsible for one of the most puzzling and misunderstood periods of Egypt’s long history. Within a few years of his ascension to the throne, he had upended the traditional priesthoods and worship and set himself up as the only son of the only supreme god, from whom all life emanated. But the old gods and centuries of tradition could not be wiped out in a stroke. Many voices privately decried what they saw as the wholesale destruction of the Order-of-Things – an interesting irony, since Akhenaten liked to refer to himself as Living-in-Truth, meaning that he was the very embodiment of the Order-of-Things.
Soon the edges of the delicately balanced empire began to fray. Vassal states sent desperate but futile pleas to Akhenaten’s court for help to fend off invaders at their walls. Meanwhile, the enigmatic, seemingly indifferent pharaoh was overseeing splendid ceremonies to the one god, the Aten, in his newly-built holy city far from the ancient Theban center. His artists and sculptors were kept busy creating works in a new, naturalistic style, which may have been a reflection of Akhenaten’s understanding of Living-in-Truth. He was living out a dream of paradise on earth with his beautiful wife Nefertiti and their six daughters.
By the time of his death – possibly at the hands of others – irreparable damage had been done to the stability of the kingdom.
Akhenaten’s dream died with him. His immediate successor, Tutankhamun, was just a boy (possibly Akhenaten’s younger brother or his son by his secondary wife Kiya). Tutankhamun’s short reign was dominated by his elderly vizier, Ay, and the powerful general Horemheb, who lost no time reestablishing the old gods and tearing down all reminders of Akhenaten’s existence. The name Akhenaten was expunged from the stones. If people referred to him at all it was as the criminal, or the heretic.
No full account of his life and times has yet been discovered. Except for the imploring letters from the besieged vassal kings, and Akhenaten’s own lyrical hymns to the Aten, we have almost nothing that would explain who he was and why he made his religious revolution. Some writers have even suggested that he had a connection with Moses. If we look to the art of the period we find some clues, but not enough to show a deeper meaning. The story of Akhenaten’s reign is an intriguing missing piece of Egypt’s history.
Following Tutankhamun’s early death Ay took the throne briefly, bringing the great 18th Dynasty to a sad and troubled end.
Whether Horemheb unseated Ay or became king after Ay’s death, no one really knows, but Horemheb was immensely popular and he possessed the qualities and determination to bring order back to Egypt. With his reign the 19th Dynasty began. It was now the year 1319 BC.
To give his claim to the throne legitimacy the aging Horemheb married a sister of Nefertiti who was not young herself. Since they had no children, he hand-picked his own successor, his vizier and general of the armies, Ramesses. Both men shared a driving ambition to rebuild what many believed had been so recklessly dismantled. At Horemheb’s death the double crown of Egypt passed to his trusted vizier.
Ramesses had come from an old military family in a part of the eastern Delta that worshipped the god Set as the warrior god. When Ramesses’ first son was born it was only natural that he would give the child the auspicious name of Sety – Set’s man.*
The boy Sety grew up in his father’s footsteps, becoming known as a gifted military officer and leader, as befitted his bloodline. Sety was probably in his late 30s when his father became pharaoh. Ramesses, by then a man of advanced age, promptly appointed Sety co-regent to assure a smooth succession. The reign, and life, of Ramesses would last only two more years.
It was 1306, and Sety was now king. He was also a man with a family. As a youth he had married a non-royal woman who had borne him a son, Pa-Ramessu, but by the time Sety came to the throne he was a widower. With his second wife, a noblewoman named Tuy, he had a second son, Ramesses.
Both boys were brought up in the family military tradition. There are records that in the early part of Sety’s reign Pa-Ramessu accompanied his father into battle. However close the relationship between father and older son might have been, one thing was inescapable: Pa-Ramessu could never succeed his father to the throne because his mother was not of royal blood. At some point the younger boy, Ramesses, was named co-regent instead. This period is described in Abydos: Holy City of Ancient Egypt:*
Now we can sense a tragedy in Sety’s personal and public life. His elder son apparently committed some great crime; perhaps he plotted against the lives of his father and little brother; probably we shall never know what he did. But whatever it was, it was punishable by death and disgrace in this world and the next. His body was found at the bottom of a deep pit at Medinet el Gurob in the Fayoum region. It lay in a fine stone sarcophagus from which the inscriptions had all been hammered out. But when photographed by infra-red light, the word “King’s son of Men-Maat-Ra, Pa-Ramessu” could be seen. The body… had never been mummified and was wrapped in a sheepskin; a disgrace accorded only to the worst type of criminal. Some forensic doctors have suggested that the man may have been buried alive.…We have little doubt that this early tragedy in the reign of Sety must have left its mark.
Sety ruled Egypt for 16 years, during which time he laid to rest any possible questions of his right to the throne