Abydos Sancrosanctity (Reply)

Author: * Neseret Sekhmet - 21 Posts on this thread out of 21 Posts sitewide.
Date: Nov 20, 2006 - 22:36

Mirjam Nebet wrote: "The water in the canals at Abedjou was probably so sacred that only the highest of the priests or the king himself could dip into it - but not so other sacred lakes at other locations.

The reason for the Osireion - and the temple of Seti I - being so sacrosanct, was that it was built to recreate Osiris resting in the Underworld - the god was recreated in the earthly dimension and thus present in actual fact."

That's a little abstract. One of the reasons for the sanctity of Abydos was due to the ancient predynastic and early dynastic graves located there. It is thought, from references in certain Abydene texts, that the dynastic Egyptians may have located one of of these early royal graves, and since their historical sense was primarily oral myths from the earliest periods (Baines 1994), they equated this early grave with the actual repose of the "dead god-king", Osiris.

Petrie speculated that it may have been Djer's grave which was uncovered near the Osireion site, for example (vide Murray, Milne, et al. 1989 (1903)), which caused first a Middle Kingdon cult chapel to be placed near there, which was later demolished during the New Kingdom by Seti I in forming the Osireion.

Whatever the case, Abydos' position as possibly the most sacred location in Egypt, from which one of the major tenets of Egyptian religion - the afterlife - was formulated from very ancient periods, long before the pharaonic period (Mekhitarian, Kunnen, et al. 1998; ). In a way, ancient Abydos was the equivalent of Jerusalem, Mecca, or the Vatican - the fount of some of the basic tenets of Egyptian belief - so sacred, that it required a pilgrimage by an adult Egyptian at least once during their lifetime (Yoyotte 1960).

Further, Osiris was not the first major chthonic deity to be associated with the Abydene site. One of the original chthonic deities of Abydos was likely Khentiamentiu ("Foremost of the Westerners"), which later became an epithet for Osiris, but was originally an independent deity. Another was Wepwawet, a wolf-like deity which acted as a psychopomp for the dead, mythically leading them into the afterlife via a cleft in the mountain near Abydos, referred to as Pega ("The Gap") (Spiegel 1973;Omm Sety/Eady and el-Zeini 1981; Eady 1983).

"And the reason for Osiris being so holy, was the mythic background; the story of how Osiris was slayed by his brother Set and revenged by his son Horus, which in its turn is reflected in the ruling king being the 'Living Horus' while the deceased king was 'Osiris'."

While all true, one has to understand that the Egyptian belief in an afterlife, in which the dead lived on in another state, is far older than Osiris. Osiris' cult is not as ancient as the Egyptian afterlife belief system; his cult arose after the 4th Dynasty, as I recall (Griffiths 1980). Before that, he was merely one of many chthonic deities who were associated with death and rebirth - possibly as an agricultural deity. But it was Osiris' association with the institution of kingship which raised him from a mere agricultural deity to a major force in Egyptian religion.

"So there existed varying degrees of 'sacrosanctity' then, other sacred lakes were, what we know, not considered exclusively for high priests or the king, both waEb´s and other priesthood could use it. Sacredness, or intensity of sacredness varies according to where, or how close one is to the 'most holy' of places.

Temples in general show this in that the outer parts of it are open for laymen while the inner courts and rooms are allowed only for priesthood. The innermost sanctuary is only open for the high priest or the king."

Again, while all true, Abydos retains a certain je ne sais quoi in the ancient Egyptian psyche which transcends any specific deity.

Part of it is the way the landscape of the area is formed, in my opinion, and according to many specialists in Egyptian religion: the richness of the land close to the river is contrasted starkly against the soaring mountain range which separates the fertile land from the desert land behind it. In short, Abydos exemplifies the Egyptian concept of the liminal division between the worlds of the living and the dead, just as concretely as any descripton in Egyptian afterlife texts, which is why it was considered as the most sacred of Egyptian religious areas before and during the pharaonic period.

Reference:

Baines, J. 1994. Ancient Egyptian concepts and uses of the past: 3rd to 2nd millennium BC evidence. In R. Layton, Ed., Who Needs the Past? Indigenous Values and Archaeology: 131-149. London/New York: Routledge.

Eady, D. L. 1983. Omm Sety's Abydos. The Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities (SSEA) Studies No. 3. Mississauga: Benben Publications.

Griffiths, J. G. 1980. The Origins of Osiris and his Cult. Studies in the History of Religions (Supplements to Numen) 40. Leiden: Brill.

Mekhitarian, A., M. Kunnen, et al. 1998. Abydos: Sacred Precinct of Osiris. P. J. Frandsen and M.-C. Van Hoorebeke. Knokke: Mappamundi.

Murray, M. A., J. G. Milne, et al. 1989 (1903). The Osireion at Abydos. Egyptian Research Account. 9th Memoir. London: Histories and Mysteries of Man.

Omm Sety/Eady, D. and H. el Zeini. 1981. Abydos: Holy City of Ancient Egypt. Los Angeles: L L Company.

Spiegel, J. 1973. Die Götter von Abydos. Studien zum ägyptischen Synkretismus. Göttinger Orientforschungen IV Reihe: Ägypten. Band 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Yoyotte, J., S. Sauneron, et al. 1960. Les Pelerinages. Égypte anncienne - Israël - Islam - Perse - Inde - Tibet - Indonésie - Madagascar - Chine - Japon. Sources Orientales III. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

I hope this assisted.

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg