189: For the Ancestors

Sety at Abydos (Part 4). Finishing our tour of Sety’s Great Temple at Abydos, we explore a few more sanctuaries and facilities. Then, we discuss the monument overall. Sety invested huge resources into his building projects at Abydos, and these monuments connect to some truly ancient traditions. What were the King’s priorities, what was he trying to achieve?

Photos of monuments described in this episode:

Sety’s Temple: Kairoinfo4u.

Sety’s Temple: Wikimedia.

Chapel of Ramesses I: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Umm el-Qa’ab, pottery sherds from ancient offerings: Soloegipto.

Descriptions and excavation reports:

Caulfeild, Temple of the Kings at Abydos, 1902: Internet Archive and Heidelberg University.

Calverley, The Temple of King Sethos I at Abydos, in four volumes. Volume I, The Chapels of Osiris, Isis, and Horus (1933); Volume II, The Chapels of Amen-Re, Re-Harakhti, Ptah, and King Sethos (1935); Volume III, The Osiris Complex (1938); Volume IV, The Second Hypostyle Hall (1958). All volumes available in PDF at The University of Chicago.

Texts: K. A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions Translated and Annotated: Translations Volume I: Ramesses I, Sethos I and Contemporaries (Second Publication edn, 2017).

Interpreting the temple complex and adjacent facilities:

David, Temple Ritual at Abydos (2018).

O’Connor, Abydos: Egypt’s First Pharaohs and the Cult of Osiris (2009).

Verner, Temple of the World: Sanctuaries, Cults, and Mysteries of Ancient Egypt (2013).

Additional details and sources:

Date: c.1300 BCE—1292 BCE.

Music intro and interludes: Luke Chaos.

Music outro: Ancient Lyric.

Sistrum interludes: Tahya / Hathor Systrum.

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