Abydos Egypt
Frequently Asked Questions
On the Nile bank near the town of El-Balyana, in Middle Egypt. The site itself lies about twelve kilometres from the river: the coach ride takes around twenty minutes, through cane fields and mud-brick villages.
Because it was the great pilgrimage centre devoted to Osiris, god of the dead and of rebirth. Egyptians of every station dreamed of being buried there, or at least of raising a stela. The earliest pharaohs in history have their tombs there, in the Umm el-Qa'ab necropolis.
The building that justifies the journey. Completed by Ramesses II around 1300 BCE, it preserves reliefs that many Egyptologists consider the finest in the country: faces of surprising gentleness, precise carving of wigs and collars, original colour still vivid in places.
They are unique in Egyptian architecture: seven vaulted chapels side by side at the back of the temple, dedicated to Osiris, Isis, Horus, Amun-Re, Re-Horakhty, Ptah and the deified pharaoh himself. Seven houses of gods under one roof.
A wall in a side gallery bearing seventy-six royal cartouches in impeccable script, which Seti I and the young Ramesses present as an offering to their ancestors. The document, which carefully omits rulers judged illegitimate, helped historians reconstruct the chronology of the dynasties.
A structure of cyclopean granite blocks, half flooded with green water, just behind and below the temple. It suggests a symbolic tomb of Osiris. Its massive architecture, so unlike the refinement next door, has fuelled scholarly debate for a century.
The whole site is easily covered in two hours. A flashlight helps with the reliefs in the darker rooms. Three hundred metres northwest, the remains of the temple of Ramesses II also preserve coloured reliefs.
No, and that is exactly what makes the call precious. Few boats still stop here, and you often have the chapels in complete quiet — a rarity on the Nile.
A farming Middle Egypt that the classic circuits fly over: cane fields, mud-brick villages, farmers irrigating their land. The road stops abruptly at the desert edge, and it is on that exact boundary that the ancients built the sanctuary.
A hat, water and sturdy shoes for the uneven ground of the ruined courts. A flashlight for the dark rooms. And time: the Seti I reliefs deserve to be stopped in front of one by one rather than walked past.
