Omm Sety was well known to the inhabitants of Abydos. She had lived among them for about 40 years when she died in 1981. Her name means "Mother of Sety", according to the Arabic habit of not using a woman´s name but name her as the mother of her eldest son, in this case "Sety". This was the name of the historical, ancient King Seti I and there is a reason for it. He will have an important bearing on the story of the woman who dared to live her dream of the past into the modern day.

Dorothy Eady, an English girl.
Omm Sety´s birth name was Dorothy Eady and she was born in England, in 1904. When she was three years old she suffered a fall, hit her head and a doctor pronounced her dead. However, a few hours later the littel girl woke up and it was at this point her fascination for ancient Egypt began. She often dreamt that she was in an Egyptian temple and soon she said she was visiting there in her astral body during sleep. When she grew older, she looked for information about all things concerning ancient Egypt and found out that the place really existed - the Temple of Seti I in Abydos. She did this on her own with no encouragement from her parents or any other grownups. Ofte she told her parents that she wanted to "go home".

Dorothy was lucky to live not far away from British Museum and spent every free moment there. Here she met Ernest Wallis Budge, Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the time, and learned hieroglyphs and history from him. However, her regular education was interrupted by the WW II. At the end of it she met a young Egyptian student in London and married him. It borught her to Egypt. The marriage lasted only a couple of years and the result was their son, Sety. It was then time for her true Egyptian career to start off.

For years she worked in the Department of Antiqities at Giza as assistant to some of the famous egyptologists of the day. She worked as a draftsperson to Dr Selim Hassan, who credited Dorothy for drawings, editing and indexing three of his ten volumes on the excavations at the Plateau. After Giza, she became assistant of Dr Ahmed Fakry at Dahshur, doing restauration works and cataloguing the finds.

Abydos, Home at Last.
Only after living in Cairo for 19 years, did Dorothy finally visit Abydos for the first time. This was just a brief stay and she was forced to go back to Cairo again but Fakhry managed to get her a job as draftsman there in 1956. From then on she remained at Abydos until her death. She surprized people with her profound knowledge of the Seti Temple; even professional Egyptologists were impressed after meeting her. But she also made hersef useful among the locals learning and practising ancient and traditional cures against various ailments.

All throughout her youth and her working years in Cairo, Dorothy had been silently convinced of a former life during the New Kingdom Period as a young temple servant in the Temple of Seti I at Abydos. She never said anything about it to people around her and worked on, abiding her time, intent on one day being able to live at her old temple at Abydos again. In fact, she committed her life to get there and it took her 25 years.

Two Worlds
At Abydos she could live her dream, her conviction, which had developed during so many years. She was uncompromising about her own reality but she never forced it upon other people. Her reality was that she had once been the lover of Seti I and that she took her own life when she became pregnant rather than to compromise the King, to whom temple servants were off limits. In her diary she writes about the many visits by her astral lover, Seti, and she even relates their conversations. But more than this, she also openly worshipped the ancient gods and laid down offerings to them at the temple on festval days and other occasions. She called herself ancient while living in the modern world and all throughout her life, she managed to live in two parallell worlds.

Despite this, she didn´t lose her wits but was also a researcher in her own right and she discovered things about the temple from "memory". The Temple Garden is such an example; she pointed out where diggings should be done and sure enough, there were found traces of canals for watering and other signs of there having been a garden.

It can be said of Omm Sety that she was an eccentric. Maybe so, but the fact is that she never went over the top. She was at all times sensible and carrying on with her daily chores as any other person, caring for her friends and for people around her. She managed to live on more than one level at the same time, both in he practical everyday world and the inner dream world. Through hard and determined work she became a scholar and earned respect. By living close to the village people, she learnt about their life, habits and traditions - and became a folklorist. As any Egyptian, ancient or not, she loved cats atbove all and had a way with other animals, often living together with them in her simple home. And if we might venture into that elusive subject; in her soul-realm, she was true to her once-love Seti. One wants to speculate that profound love between "soul mates" which gets interrupted before time, will continue and come to its fullness in the Afterlife, just as the ancient Egyptians hoped and set as their life´s goal. A far out speculation perhaps, but Omm Sety surely never wavered from her conviction.

She is buried at Abydos, a little ways out in the desert. If you go there, bring a simple flower and ask the locals to show you.

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