Abydos Holy City Of Ancient Egypt

*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.

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.

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.

Writing in an easy to read narrative literary style while respecting the norms of Egyptological scholarship, the author examines the contradictory opinions of major Egyptologists (and the major loonies), and brings us closer to Egypt's core meaning and influence. Along the way, he illuminates the enchanting, imaginative beauty of the Egyptian saga. Ancient Egypt built a society on a remarkable mixture of the new, the useful and the beautiful, while retaining primitive magic, obscurantism, and the infantile but extraordinarily poetic. Egypt was also one of the most optimistic nations ever founded, inventing optimistic answers to many of man's fundamental questions. Volume I surveys the religious underpinnings of the society, including the founding of the first nation - and the first nation to proclaim its sacred nature. Divine kingship, the holy city and capital city were invented here.

Of all the enormous monuments throughout Egypt and Nubia that Ramesses II (the Great; ca. 1279-1212 BCE) left behind, his temple at Abydos, built early in his reign, stands as one of his most elegant monuments, with its simple architectural layout and dramatic and graceful painted relief scenes. Though best known for its dramatic reliefs depicting the battle of Kadesh, the temple also offers a wealth of information about religious and social life in ancient Egypt. It reflects, for example, the strenuous efforts of the early Ramessides to reestablish the Osiris cult in Egypt--and particularly at Abydos--in the aftermath of the Amarna period. Over a seven-year period, the authors of The Temple of Ramesses II in Abydos conducted a field project with the aim of producing an up-to-date and comprehensive architectural, photographic, and epigraphic record of the temple. This lavish volume, the second of two documenting their results, presents miscellaneous elements of the temple, including the pillars, as well as translations of the inscriptions found in the temple. Volume 1, "Wall Scenes," contains more than two hundred detailed line drawings--accurately rendered according to modern epigraphical standards--of the temple's carved relief scenes, placed alongside their corresponding full-color photographs. The result is a masterpiece of modern epigraphic research and publication.

In this thought-provoking book, Patricia Cori takes time from her channeled work as the Scribe to the Speakers of the Sirian High Council to focus on her past-life experiences in ancient Egypt. The book begins dramatically with the traumatic recall of a past Egyptian life, when Cori relives a horrifying death by suffocation—from being buried alive. This experience propels her on a journey of exploration into the question of human immortality, leading her back to Egypt where she unravels the origins of the ancient Egyptians’ obsession with the resurrection of the soul.Cori’s discoveries reveal new perspectives on Egyptian mysteries, new timelines as to the beginnings of the civilization, and controversial ideas that link the earliest Egyptian cultures with even earlier civilizations, such as that of Atlantis. As she returns to sites of her former lives, Cori begins to receive messages through which she relives the past-life regression, guiding her to discover secrets of the ancient Egyptians. Finally, she travels beyond the veil of illusions into the “otherworld” of possibilities that lies beyond physical existence. This exciting book weaves strands of science, history, and metaphysics into a shimmering tapestry of personal discovery.