Abydos NAville

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Egypt Exploration Society

AbydosAuthor(s): Edouard NavilleReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jan., 1914), pp. 2-8Published by: Egypt Exploration SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3853664.

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ABYDOSTHE name of Abydos is a good example of what we call popular etymology.Its Egyptian form is Abut or Abtu, which sounds like the name of the city of Abydoson the Hellespont, a most familiar name to the Greeks. Finding an Egyptian wordwhich had some likeness to the name they knew, the Greeks mixed the two together,as is often the case in our time.Abydos was a large city. Its foundation must go back to the earliest time of

Egyptian history, but it never was very powerful in a political sense. In this respectit could never be compared with Thebes or Memphis. Its importance was chieflyreligious; just as On, Heliopolis, was the city and residence of Turn Harmakhis, Abydoswas that of Osiris. This god is constantly called he who resides at Abydos, and sincehe is as often styled the god of the West, Abydos has become the symbol of theWest, just as the city of Dad, Busiris, is that of the East.Abydos is the residence of Osiris. This god is by far the most interesting ofEgyptian gods. He is the only one who has a kind of moral character, while all theothers are forces of nature or natural phenomena. He is the god of the dead, afunerary divinity, before whom takes place the most solemn scene found in the Bookof the Dead, the judgment. At Abydos is supposed to be the hall, or rather thecourt of law, where this scene takes place. The god, in the form of a man, is sittingon a throne under a canopy and before him are his four assessors, the gods of the fourcardinal points, and the balance in which the heart of the deceased is weighed whilethe dead man appeals to forty-two divinities and takes them as witnesses that he hasnot committed any of the forty-two capital sins. We must consider that this scene takesplace in a celestial Abydos. Just as each man has a Ka, a double, exactly similar towhat he has been on earth, somnething like his shadow, who lives in the other world,so it is with some of the religious cities. They have in the other world a double,a repetition, a kind of projection exactly similar to what they are in this world.This is particularly striking in the case of Heliopolis, Abydos and Busiris, for theyall have their places in the celestial geography. Heliopolis sometimes reminds one ofthe celestial Jerusalem.Another place near Abydos which occurs constantly in the funereal texts is Roset,the entrance to the lower world, a kind of opening through which the deceased haveto pass. It may be one of the clefts one sees in the mountains closing the horizon onthe West, which are the beginning of the desert.Osiris is a god having a human appearance. He is generally seen holding in hishands the hook and the flail, the emblems of royal power. His consort is Isis andhis son Horus. Is this human form the original appearance of the god, and is Osiris

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his original name? These are questions very much discussed. Various authorsadvocate the idea that this form of Osiris and the well-known myth of his destructionby Set, who dismembered his body, as well as the restoration of his body by his sonHorus, come from the Delta in the North. I shall not now discuss this matter. Onething seems certain, that the usual and well-known form of Osiris, the king in man'sform, is comparatively late and is not that found under the first dynasties, at least atAbydos.

Abydos had from the first been a city, the raison d'etre of which was religious.It was connected with the beginning of Egyptian history. We know from Manetho, theEgyptian priest who compiled in Greek the annals of the kings, that the first historicalking, Mena, left a place called This, in Middle Egypt, went down the river and stoppedat the head of the Delta, where he founded Memphis, and where he made greathydraulic works, diverting the bed of the Nile so that the river should flow more to theeast, in order to leave an open space on which to build his new capital Memphis.

This is in the neighbourhood of Abydos. It has been identified as a hill not veryfar from Girgeh, and called el Birbeh, the temple. The name of This is found in theNew Empire. The chief or prince of This, or the royal son of This, was an officialhaving a high administrative employment, but though This was perhaps originally thecivil and political capital of the province it was soon superseded by the religious cityof Abydos.

Evidently the information given by Manetho is correct on this point: the originof the dynastic series of kings of Egypt is derived from Abydos. There, and in theimmediate neighbourhood, we find the oldest Egyptian constructions, the remains of thefirst three dynasties. There the kings showed that they kept up their connection withThis by building their funerary monuments.About a mile from the cultivated land, at a short distance from the mountains,is a mound called by the natives Umm el Ga'ab, the mnotherof pots, because of thequantity of pottery with which it is covered and which gives it its red colour. Therethe excavations, first of a Frenchman, M. Am6lineau, and afterwards of Prof. FlindersPetrie, have revealed extensive constructions in bricks, which have been called tombs.They generally consist of a central chamber, on the sides of which are suites of rooms,where have been found vases, furniture, slate palettes, flint instruments and all theobjects which have revealed to us what the civilisation of the first dynasties had been.There were also big jars on the caps of which were sealings printed with what has beensupposed to be cylinders, but I should rather think with small engraved rectangularpieces of wood. I need not revert to the importance of the discovery of the names ofthe kings of the first three dynasties, not the name each bore as a living ruler, butthat of his Ka, his double, who is living in the other world, while his body is hiddenin the earth.The monuments at Umm el Ga'ab are called tombs. I do not consider that theywere actual burial places, at least not for the kings. I believe we have here the firstexample of what we see throughout the whole of Egyptian history. The place wherethe king is worshipped is distinct from the tomb itself. The room or the hall wherehe is worshipped is accessible to the friends and families and to the priests of thedeceased; the body is concealed in a closed chamber. When the place of worship wasenlarged and became a whole temple, as we find in the case of the temple of Deir el

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Bahari or the Ramesseum, it soon was used as a cemetery where the subjects of theking, officials, priests and perhaps his servants, were buried. It is the same at Ummel Ga'ab, where the rooms around the central chamber have been used as the burialplaces of a great number of officials and priests, probably what we may call the courtof the time, and even the dwarfs. The idea which led to this custom is twofold.The deceased wished to be as near as possible to their former ruler, and also it was akind of homage paid to the deceased king. The Kas, the doubles of his officials andpriests, were to surround his own in the other world. They were his society, for thedeceased king did not like to be alone.It seems to me probable that the chief reason which induced the kings of thefirst three dynasties to have their Ka sanctuaries at Abydos was the existence thereof the sanctuary of their god, who was called afterwards Osiris. Osiris does not appearwith this name in the earliest inscriptions, for in these he is called Apuatu or Upuatu,the opener of ways, the guide. He generally has the appearance of an animal of thecanine species, it may be a jackal, a dog, a wolf or a fox, and as such he is representedon the standard of the kings who follow himnin their imarch towards the North.Though the name of the god changed, the animals were still sacred in the place. Wehave discovered there a necropolis containing thousands of mummies of these animals.It may reasonably be supposed that there was a sanctuary of Apuatu somewherenear the present temple of Osiris. His Ka was worshipped tliere, just as the Ka ofOsiris was the divinity to whom Seti I afterwards raised a temple. When the ancientauthors speak of the tomb of Osiris, I believe this must be interpreted as being thesanctuary of the Ka, the funereal temple, just as when they speak of the tomb ofOsymandyas, the same word as Usimares Rameses II, they mean the Ramesseum,where the king was certainly not buried, since his tomb is in the valley of the kings,and his mummy, which was recovered, never was in the temple. When they speak ofthe head only of Osiris being buried at Abydos, I suppose it means that with theKa, with his statue or his emblem, was deposited the amulet of the stone head,a certain number of which have been discovered in the tombs, and which was said toensure the safety of the whole body.The founder of the great temple of Osiris was Seti I, the second king of the19th dynasty, the father of Rameses II. It consisted at first of two open courts,giving access to a columned hall of three rows of twelve columns. From this openseven vaulted rooms, each dedicated to a special divinity, the three northern onesbeing those of Osiris, Isis and Horus. From the room of Osiris a passage leads intoa part of the temple, specially dedicated to him also, consisting of a middle hall withten columns and side rooms. A wing of the temple contains the famous list of kings,from Mena to Seti I. The sculptures of these rooms, some of which, having brilliantcolours, are very well preserved, are among the finest in Egypt and are remarkablepieces of art. In front of his father's hall Rameses II built another, which, like allhis work, is done hastily and without much care. It cannnot compare with that ofSeti I.

These halls and rooms are for the ceremonies of the worship of Osiris and of thedivinities he admitted in his temrple and for each of whom a special room was butilt.But we may ask where was the chamber dedicated to the Ka, to the double ? Wherewas he supposed to reside?

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ABYDOS 5In my opinion, it must be under the sanctuary of Osiris, at a certain depth inthe earth. What makes me think it must be so, is what we found in the temple ofthe 11th dynasty at Deir el Bahari, the temple of Mentuhotep (Egypt ExplorationFund Memoirs, No. xxx, Deir el Bahari, xith Dyn., Part II). This temple ends with asanctuary, in front of which stood a hypostyle hall where the bases of the columns onlyremain. In the middle of the court, before the hypostyle hall, opens a sloping passage

disappearing very soon in the rock. It was choked at the entrance with large stones.When we had removed them, we found ourselves at the door of a rock cut corridorsloping down. It was empty, and onle could walk upright through its whole length.At a distance ot about 150 feet from the entrance, it begins to be vaulted. It endsin a small granite chamnber, xtremely well built, made of large blocks of well polishedsyenite. The greater part of it is occupied by a shrine made of blocks of alabasterof the finest quality without any inscription or oru,ament except a thick moulding. Itcertainly had a door since the holes in which the pivots turned are still visible. Infront of it were boats with figures, fragments of wooden weapons, cloth and remains ofofferings. I believe it cannot be called a tomb. It is not a burial place for it did notcontain a coffin. Its dimensions are too small to contain a stone sarcophagus as it wouldhave done had it been that of a king. Besides, a coffin is never found in a shrine.Wherever we see in the sculptures a shrine being opened, it invariably contains anemblem or a statue, and I have no doubt that it was so at Deir el Bahari. A shrinecontained the statue of the king, the figure of his Ka, and the priests could go downand take him offerings which would be described on a large stele, while a chambercontaining a mummy would have been hermetically closed. Judging from analogy,I suppose that the Ka of Osiris must have been worshipped at Abydos in a sub-terranean chapel, at a certain depth under the sanctuary of the god.We know already the entrance and part of the construction leading to it. It iswhat is called the Osireion, which we began excavating, and which we have to finishnext winter. Our aim is to reach the room where the Ka of Osiris was supposed todwell, his subterranean sanctuary.For the knowledge of the existence of a passage going probably towards thetemple, we are indebted to Prof. Flinders Petrie, or rather to Miss Murray his assistant,who was the first to attempt an excavation behind the temple of Seti, at somedistance in the sacred enclosure, the temenos. There a depression running parallel tothe enclosure on the west side showed the presence of some old work, and in factProf. Petrie discovered a subterranean passage covered with texts and figures fromthe Book of the Dead and bearing the name of King Menephtah, the son of RamtnesesI.This passage, which does not go towards the temple, ends in a small chamber, alsoornamented with funerary figures and texts. Just in front of the chamber, a doorwaywith a lintel indicates the entrance into a passage. Miss Murray stopped there, afterhaving copied the texts which were in the depth of the doorway, and covered itup again.This passage in the direction of the temple, the door of which had only beenseen, was the object which attracted us to that spot. Was it going as far as thetemple and what should we find at the end ? These various questions encouraged usto attack the enormous mounds of rubbish which were before us, and which turnedout to be even a larger work than we expected. For we had to face, not only the



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6 ABYDOSremoval of tons of sand which centuries had accumulated on these old buildings, butalso close to the temple were heaps or rather mounds of rubbish which came fromMariette's excavations, when he cleared the temple of Seti I. In fact, one winter'swork has left us only at the beginning of the task, but has revealed enough to showhow important it is to bring that excavation to a finish, and, in order to do that, towork on a larger scale than we did before.In speaking of excavations it is most dangerous to be a prophet. I should likeonly to explain briefly the reasons which allow us to hope that the work is reallyworth the money and labour. It is an excavation of a monument and not that ofa cemetery where one may expect to find objects for a museum; it is the clearingof a construction which at present seems unique.The purpose of such excavations is the solution of important questions concerninghistory, art, or religion. The Fund was the first to initiate this kind of work atDeir el Bahari, where we discovered a temple absolutely unknown. The example hasbeen followed by the Germans in the Sieglin expedition, which devoted itself to theSecond Pyramid of Gizeh. No objects were found in that extensive and costly work, butwe know much better now what the pyramids were, and the assemblage of constructionsof which they were a part. In the pyramid itself was the funereal chamber andmummy, on the east side a large and somewhat complicated temple, from whicha causeway led to the larger one. In this case, it was the so-called Temple of theSphinx, the real nature of which has been recognized and fixed. Are these not mostvaluable results ?

We are in a similar position at Abydos. There stands a temple dedicated toOsiris, which has a decided funereal character. We know from the Greek authorsthat it was called the tomb of Osiris, which was said to contain not the body ofthe god but his head. Just as on the western side of Thebes, the neighbourhoodof this temple is a vast cemetery where thousands of tombs have been discovered.One of the mounds, Kom-es-sultan, is quite honeycombed with tombs of .the 12thand 13th dynasties. What is it that gave the temple of Abydos its funerarycharacter? There must be something else than the big constructions above ground.In the case of a human king there mnight be in connection with it a tomb hiddenin some remote valley. But the Egyptians could not pretend to have the body ofthe god, so it is likely that there is a sanctuary for the Ka of the god. There is theinterest of the question raised; it has a religious bearing. What kind of constructiondid the Egyptians erect to a god whom they supposed to have died?I must say that what we have already found is very encouraging. After havingcleared again the door discovered(by Miss Murray, we pushed forward into the passagewhich was quite concealed and filled with rubbish. It slopes gently downwards, thenbecomes horizontal again, the length being about 45 feet. On the walls are texts ofthe Book of the Dead; on the right the 1st and 17th chapter, on the left the 99th,the 146th, and the negative confession. The way the texts are arranged showsthat they have been sculptured later and not at the time of the building. Thebeginning, the first chapter, is at the end of the passage; on the right the textsare read going up, the vignettes on the top of the text are also in the same order.Arriving at the entrance, the reader has to go over to the left sid(leand has to readthe texts going down. If this construction were really a tomb, as those of the kings



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Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. I

Fig. i. Scenes and inscriptions on the walls of the Osireion

Fig. 2. Coptic lamp of bronze from Abydos

Plate II, p. 7



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at Thebes, the text would begin at the entrance. Therefore we must consider allthese texts as an usurpation of Menephtah, who merely began placing them there, ordid it hastily, since in the following rooms the funerary texts are only painted, andnow hardly legible. They are not outlined for sculpture as in the tombs of the kingsbut are painted.I believe Menephtah was actuated by the same feeling as the men who hadtheir burials in the Ramesseum or at Deir el Bahari. It was his wish to be as nearas possible to Osiris, to be in his abode. In all these representations we must alwaysremember that the reason why they are made is not mere ornamentation, it is whatis called magical imitation, or rather imitative magic. The fact of something beingpainted or sculptured is sufficient to cause it to come into existence, to live in theother world. The passage had a ceiling of monolithic architraves, which have alldisappeared except the first.When we reached the end of the passage, on both sides we found wide openingswhich evidently were chambers, and in front a huge monolithic lintel 15 feet long.It looked at first like an entrance to another passage, but we soon perceived thatit was merely an opening in a stone wall about 12 feet thick, built of enormousblocks of sandstone and red quartzite. This wall separates the two rooms we had firstreached from other rooms in the direction of the temple. We could clear only thesouthern room. The west wall leans against a mound of marl and is thinner. Thesouthern one has outside a kind of rough casing in limestone and I believe it wasnot subterranean at that place. The erection was roofed over with large stones whichhave been used since as building material. Over the roof was probably sand, so thatthe whole construction looked like a huge mastaba.

The wall on the east side of the chamber is built of enormous stones very welljoined. It reminds one of the masonry of the time of the pyramids, of the so-calledTemple of the Sphinx. It seems probable that it is much older than the templeof Seti. It may have been part of the first sanctuary, for there was certainly oneat an early date, at least of the time of the 12th dynasty. Otherwise one would notunderstand why there was such a large cemetery of that epoch, and of the followingdynasty, such as is found in the hill called Kom-es-sultan, where Mariette made suchproductive excavations. Beyond this wall, going towards the temple, we could tracetwo more rooms, so that what we are now excavating is not a mere passage, it isa series of rooms, the last of which is probably under the temple of Seti.

This is one of the questions raised by this unique construction. Are we herein the oldest sanctuary of Osiris ? For we cannot suppose that there was none atthe time when the kings of the first dynasties built their funereal monuments at Ummel Ga'ab. There must have been a settlement of some importance in a place whichalready, at that early time, had a sacred character. This character would naturallybe derived from the existence of a sanctuary, from its being the abode of a mostvenerated divinity.

Abydos has always been the city of Osiris, as Heliopolis was the city of Tum.When did Abydos begin to be the residence of the god ? When was the first placeof worship erected there, and when did Osiris take that name instead of Apuatu ?I am going to risk an opinion which, I confess, is at present only a conjecture. Thename of Osiris means he who makes a seat or an abode, and Apuatu, as we have

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seen, is the opener of ways, the guide whom the conquerors follow. Did the changeof name not take place when an abode, a sanctuary, was first built at Abydos, and heceased to be the wandering god, the standard of a tribe of migrating conquerors?If this hypothesis were confirmed, it would explain also why Abydos was the firstcapital of the early kings, and the starting point of Menes. Perhaps the excavationsof next winter will throw some light on these points, but we must not be too hopeful,and especially we must not venture on any prophecy.The work next winter will be on a larger scale than before. As you know, theclearing is done with railway plant, lent to us very kindly by the Service des Antiquit6s.We shall require, and probably shall have to purchase, more cars. The plan is tohave two parallel lines working, one on either side. The amount of rubbish to becarried away is enormous. Last year we did not touch the northern chamber at theend of the passage, because it lay under something like 30 feet of rubbish which ournorthern line will have to remove. Further, towards the temple, we are in loose sandconstantly falling in again, a most unpleasant addition to our labour.When we stopped at the end of the winter of 1912, we had reached the foot ofthe high mound resulting from Mariette's excavations. When this famous explorercleared the back rooms of the temple of Seti, he had in view only the constructionitself. Besides, the time had not yet come when work of that kind was done witha railway. The rubbish was carried away only with baskets. One may fancy thenumnberof boys required for clearing large halls like those of such a large temple.It was necessary to throw the rubbish as nrearas possible, just behind the wall of thetemple. The sight of this mound was certainly very discouraging. Next monthwhen we resume work, we shall find that it is gone. Sir Gaston Maspero had forseveral years intended to complete the work of Mariette, and to clear the access tothe temple of Seti I. The native houses in front of the entrance court were to bepulled down, and the ground excavated in order to show the avenue leaditng to thatcourt. At the same time, it was necessary to carry off part of Mariette's moundwhich was close to the wall of the temple and rose above its height. Sir Gastontold us that since he was obliged to attack this mound he might as well havethe whole removed, and thus greatly facilitate our work, if the Fund were disposedto bear part of the cost. An arrangement was made with Sir Gaston, the Fundcontributed 200 towards the expense, and the whole part of the mound which wasin front of us has been carried away under the direction of the Inspector, M. Lefebvre.Thus we shall have to carry on only proper excavation, and we have to expressour thanks to Sir Gaston and his agent, to whose kindness and work we owe it thatthe huge mound has been removed at a relatively small cost, and thus we have beensaved a considerable amount of labour and time. We may expect now that, witha sufficient number of men, and with a little more plant, we shall be able thiswinter to finish the Osireion, unless something unexpected turns up, which mayalways happen.I earnestly hope that we shall have no reason to regret the expense and thelabour, and I shall be very happy if you realize in some degree the importance andthe interest of the questions to be solved by the excavation of the Osireion.

EDOUARD NAVILLE.

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Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. I

Entrance to inner chamber of the Osireion, discovered I9gi

Plate I, lFrontispiece

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