Tag Archives: AncientEgypt

Lighting the tombs

A photo of the Tombs of the Nobles, Luxor, Egypt.

Tombs of the Nobles. West Bank, Luxor, Egypt. Jan 2020.

One of the things that has always fascinated me during my visits to Egypt is the astonishing wall reliefs in the underground and rock cut tombs.  These days, they are lit with the help of electric bulbs.  But surely in ancient times these subterranean sepulchres were DARK !

But of course I should have realised this would present no difficulty whatsoever for the enterprising ancient Egyptians.  Let’s face it, they thought nothing of hauling enormous blocks of granite from one end of the country to the other, building gigantic pyramids that are still standing four-and-a-half thousand years later, and mummifying their dead to preserve them, quite literally, forever.

Even so, to carve and paint chambers hundreds of metres underground ? How did they do it ?  Well, here’s how …

Here is a short video clip showing yours truly with wonderful Waleed Mostafa, guide on my most recent trip to Egypt.  We’re in the tomb of Rekhmire, one of the Tombs of the Nobles.

Sadly, my modern video camera does rather too good of brightening the darkness to really give a good impression of how the ancients turned night to day underground.  But hopefully you get the basic idea !

If you’ve been to Egypt, you’ll know how blinding the sunlight is.  Apparently the kohl the ancient Egyptians wore around their eyes wasn’t just cosmetic.  It was an ancient form of sunglasses to reduce the fierce glare of the sun !

Fiona Deal, Author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, all available on Amazon. To join Merry on her adventures please click on each picture for the link.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Carter's Conundrums

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Carter’s Conundrums. Book 1 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Tutankhamun’s Triumph.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Tutankhamun’s Triumph. Book 2 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Hatshepsut’s Hideaway.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Hatshepsut’s Hideaway. Book 3 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Farouk’s Fancies.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Farouk’s Fancies. Book 4 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Akhenaten’s Alibi.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Akhenaten’s Alibi. Book 5 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Seti’s Secret.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Seti’s Secret. Book 6 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Belzoni’s Bequest.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Belzoni’s Bequest. Book 7 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Nefertari’s Narrative.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Nefertari’s Narrative. Book 8 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Ramses’ Riches.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Ramses’ Riches. Book 9 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

Travel during Lockdown

Right now much of the world is in lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the planet.

But, to my way of looking at it, we can still travel.  Just not literally (by which I mean physically).

But we can read books set in far-flung places.  I can pick up Alexander McCall Smith’s wonderful series about the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency and be immediately transported to Botswana.  It’s a country that remains on my bucket list but, even so, I feel as if I’ve been there.

 

In the same way, I hope my series following Meredith Pink on her adventures in Egypt can mentally take readers to the heat, light, dust and magic of the Land of the Pharaohs.  Here’s the first couple of lines to whet your appetite:  “At first, when I found myself locked in Howard Carter’s house for the night, I thought it must be an elaborate prank.  A little later, when I smashed one of his pictures, I stopped seeing the funny side.”

We can also look at pictures and photographs to remind ourselves of the wonders of far flung places we might long to travel to.  Here are a few of my favourites taken on my travels in Egypt:

Feluccas on the Nile – Aswan

The Great Temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel

Elephantine Island, Aswan

The Old Cataract Hotel, Aswan

Elephantine Island, Aswan

Elephantine Island, Aswan

Temple of Isis, Philae

Kiosk of Trajan, Philae

Philae Temples

The Nile

Obelisk at Karnak Temple

Rebuilt Pylon at Karnak Temple

Medinet Habu

Hatshepsut’s Mortuary Temple

Hatshepsut’s Mortuary Temple

Denderah Temple of Hathor

Egyptian sunset

The Open Court – Karnak

Hypostyle Hall, Karnak

Karnak Temple

Karnak Temple

Mortuary Temple of Seti I

Ramesseum

Ramesseum

Fallen colossus at the Ramesseum

Colossi of Memnon

The Winter Palace Hotel, Luxor

Fiona Deal, Author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, all available on Amazon.

To join Merry on her adventures please click on each picture for the link.

The Tutankhamun Exhibition Saatchi Gallery

I was lucky enough to visit the Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh Tutankhamun Exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London on its opening weekend in November 2019.  It’s scheduled to be on in London until May 2020.  But given the current Coronavirus lockdown, I know its doors are very much closed right now.

So, just in case you missed it, here’s a selection of the photographs I took of this fabulous collection.  It’s on its last tour outside of Egypt before joining the other Tutankhamun treasures in the Grand Egyptian Museum, which was scheduled (finally) to open late this year, 2020.  Although, again, given the Coronavirus pandemic rampaging around the world this may – sadly – be yet again delayed.

A spectacular exhibition, to be sure !

Replica of burial chamber wall reliefs

   

Fiona Deal, Author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, all available on Amazon.

To join Merry on her adventures, please click on each picture for the link.

The trouble with writing contemporary fiction

Hi, I’m Fiona Deal, author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, all available on Amazon.  My books follow the adventures of my thoroughly modern heroine Merry as she unlocks secrets from Egypt’s ancient past and unravels centuries’ old mysteries.

I started writing the books back in 2012 and decided to set them in the present day.  There are now nine books in the series, and I’m embarking on my tenth.

Deciding to make the books contemporary (rather than historical) fiction has been both a blessing and a curse.

I’ve been fascinated by ancient Egypt since I was a child, so researching its pharaonic history to provide the mysteries for my novels has always been a pleasure and never felt like hard work.  But to actually set my books in ancient Egypt ?  Well, that felt like a leap too far.  I wanted my characters to experience Egypt the way I do.  Part of the joy of writing them has been imagining myself into Merry’s shoes, and living her adventures along with her.  And hoping that my readers might do the same.

But it’s meant I’ve had to stay true to events in Egypt and around the world as they’ve unfolded.  When I started writing the series in April 2012, a little over a year after the Arab Spring I could never have imagined the political turmoil that would topple President Mohamed Morsi (Egypt’s first democratically elected president) from office just a year or so later.  Nor the terrorist atrocities that would rock its tourist industry.  And now we have the lockdown of the Coronavirus around the world. So travel to the Nile Valley (or anywhere else for that matter) is off-limits.

I’ve had to negotiate my way around these obstacles and – wherever possible – weave them into my stories.  All of which rather makes me wonder if my decision to write modern stories was the right one after all.

Lucky for me, I do have a couple of years to play with.  There’s an advantage to having been so deeply distracted by events in my own life recently.  These have included taking on a whole new remit at work, and also a new relationship.

Merry’s last adventure took place in early 2017 when tourism to Egypt was just starting to pick up.  (She herself may have had a small part to play in all that !!)  So I can let her plunge headfirst into some new adventures while also bringing her up-to-date.  And maybe Merry can somehow escape the Coronavirus-related restrictions altogether.

For the rest of us the options right now are more limited. I was lucky enough to visit Cairo twice last year.  And I spent two weeks over Christmas and New Year 2019-20 in Egypt exploring the sites of Aswan and Luxor, with a short Nile cruise thrown in for good measure.  But sadly my trip to Cairo scheduled for the 2020 Easter weekend became a Coronavirus casualty.

But on the upside… since world travel is impossible right now, it leaves only the opportunity of exploring foreign parts vicariously: through TV, films, books and online.  Speaking for myself, this means throwing myself into writing Merry’s latest adventure.  So I can take myself off to Egypt in my imagination and experience its sights and sounds, the dust and the heat and the wonder of its ancient monuments.

If you feel like travelling to Egypt right now, even if only from your armchair, you might want to join Merry on her adventures.  Please click on each picture for the link.  Happy travels.

Carter’s Conundrums

Carter’s Conundrums is the first book in my fictional series following Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt.  It’s available  to download at the special promotional price of £0.99/ $1.50 here.

The books are present-day adventure stories.  Meredith (Merry) is a thoroughly modern heroine who gets caught up in ancient Egyptian mysteries.  No time travel, but in Carter’s Conundrums she embarks on a treasure hunt.

When English tourist Meredith Pink finds herself locked inadvertently in the Howard Carter museum in Luxor for the night, she has no idea about the thrilling Egyptian adventure she’s about to embark on.  The museum was once Howard Carter’s home, where he lived during the historic years of his discovery and clearance of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.  Attempting to break free, Merry accidentally smashes the frame surrounding an original Carter watercolour of an elusive Egyptian queen.  The discovery inside of a hidden message from Howard Carter himself, together with a set of mysterious hieroglyphics, sets her off on a quest to solve the puzzle of a lifetime. 

Along the way she teams up with the dashing Adam Tennyson, a self-proclaimed “thwarted” Egyptologist.  Together they set about unriddling the ancient texts, and find themselves on a madcap treasure hunt around some of Egypt’s most thrilling locations.  

An exciting blend of adventure, mystery and romance, Carter’s Conundrums will demand all of Merry’s imagination and love of the fabled ancient land of the pharaohs to keep her on the trail, and out of trouble.

Read the reviews here.

Fiona Deal, Author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, all available on Amazon. To join Merry on her adventures please click on each picture for the link.

Howard Carter’s House

 

Hi, I’m the author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, a mystery/adventure series set in the present day, but all with an ancient Egyptian mystery at their heart.  There are nine books in the series so far.  The first starts with English tourist Merry being inadvertently locked inside the Howard Carter Museum (once his house) near the Valley of the Kings.  Trying to escape, she accidentally smashes a picture frame. Inside, she finds a coded message which sets her off on a madcap treasure hunt around some of Egypt’s most iconic sites.

Here are a few photographs of where it all started: inside Howard Carter’s house, now fabulously presented as a museum.  It evokes the rather austere living arrangements of a 1920s excavator and archaeologist.

This is the desk Merry falls onto while trying to climb up and release the bolts on the window shutters. (Me wearing Howard Carter’s hat – although I doubt its the real one!)

 

This is the bed Merry scoots under to rescue her bangle which has slipped off her wrist.  The guard doesn’t see her when he does his last check before locking up, which is how she comes to get locked in for the night.

Fiona Deal, Author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, all available on Amazon. To join Merry on her adventures please click on each picture for the link.

Speaking of Inspiration…

I posted recently about the amazing author Elizabeth Peters and what an inspiration her Egypt-based Amelia Peabody series was to me.

My fascination with Egypt was sparked as a teenager when my parents took my brother and me on a half-term break to Egypt: a flying visit to Cairo and Luxor.  I think it’s fair to say that once Egypt grabbed hold of me it never let me go.   It’s become a lifelong fascination.

And I know I’m not alone.  One only has to look at the Egyptian galleries in the major museums of the world, always thronged with people.  The Metropolitan in New York, Le Louvre in Paris, the amazing Museo Egizio in Turin and of course our own British Museum.

Here I am outside the Egyptian Museum in Turin:

Switch on the TV on almost any night, skim through the channels and you’re bound to come across Egypt-themed documentaries.

But I thought I’d use this short post to highlight a few other amazing sources of inspiration for my Egyptian mystery adventure series.

Starting of course with the magnificent Agatha Christie – apparently only outsold by Shakespeare and the Bible !!  Her book Death on the Nile has been made into films that I watch over and over – capturing the romance of cruising along the Nile, and shot on location at some of my favourite hotels and historical sites.

And I’m excited to say it looks as if a new dramatisation is scheduled for movie release later in 2020, with Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot (reprising the role he took in Murder on the Orient Express a couple of years ago).  I can only hope the Coronavirus pandemic currently sweeping the world doesn’t put this on hold for too long.

 

But my greatest source of inspiration of all has to be the box-set documentary-drama “EGYPT” produced by the BBC in 2005.  I’ve watched these over and over.  They tell the stories of Howard Cater’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb (inspiration for my first three novels), Giovanni Belzoni’s remarkable discoveries along the Nile (inspiration for books 7-9) and Jean-Francois Champollion’s decipherment of the hieroglyphic language (also drawn on in books 7-9).  I love the format which manages to combine history with drama to tell the story and bring the characters to life.

And this is just to skim the surface.  If I listed all the books – fact and fiction – that have inspired me, I’d be here all day. Instead, I have writing of my own to do.  I’m underway with book 10 in my series, set in Luxor and inspired by the murder mystery surrounding the death of the last warrior pharaoh Ramses III.

Fiona Deal, Author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, all available on Amazon.  If you’re interested in joining Merry on her adventures please click on each picture for the link. Happy travels!

My inspiration: Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody series

Hi, I’m Fiona Deal, author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, all available on Amazon.

In a recent post I wrote about the challenges of deciding to set my Egyptian mystery adventure series in modern times. I wanted to write the books as if I were experiencing them myself, on a tourist holiday caught up in the adventure of a lifetime. They were conceived as modern escapist fiction, something to read on the commute (in my case) into London, or perhaps on a sun lounger on holiday.

They were also written to fill a huge gap. Back in 2008 (and purely by chance on an Amazon search for novels about Egypt) I stumbled across the Amelia Peabody series written by the wonderful Elizabeth Peters.  This is a writing pseudonym for the prolific Barbara Mertz, who also happened to be an Egyptologist.  Here are her first three (of eighteen) books in the series:

I came to the Amelia Peabody books pretty late on as they were first published in the 1980s.  By the time I discovered them their author was already in her nineties, although still writing.  To say I devoured them would be the understatement of the century.  A fabulous series of books, they differ from mine in being essentially murder mysteries and also set in Victorian times. But, like mine, they are (mostly) set in Egypt and draw from its glorious ancient past.

Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody stories were a massive inspiration for me.  And the void they left when I realised there would be no more was part of what inspired me to write an Egyptian-based series of my own.

I don’t claim to have the Egyptological credentials nor the writing pedigree of Elizabeth Peters (AKA Barbara Mertz) – she published vast numbers of books across different genres and under different pseudonyms.  But I do always take it as the most enormous compliment when I receive a review (and there have been a few) which liken my books to hers, and say I have gone some way towards filling a gap in their reading lives too.

So, thank you to Elizabeth Peters for bringing me the joy of Amelia Peabody and her wonderful family and hangers-on.  She was truly an inspiration.

If you’re locked down in the current Coronavirus crisis and feel like travelling to Egypt, even if only from your armchair, might I encourage you to read the Amelia Peabody series.  Or you might want to join my Merry on her adventures.  Please click on each picture for the link.  Happy travels.

In a Parallel Universe

In a parallel universe – one in which the coronavirus COVID-19 is not rampaging around the world – I would be spending this Easter weekend in Cairo, Egypt.

As it happens, the bank holiday weekend weather here in the UK is glorious: warm and sunny.  So, with Britain (alongside much of the world) in lockdown, and with the sun shining, I am using my time productively.  This entails sitting in my back garden and reading everything I can lay my hands on about Ramses III.  For he shall be the historical subject of my next novel.  A man murdered by a conspiracy from within his own household, led by one of his queens.  Known as the Harem Conspiracy, his death marked the beginning of the end for the once mighty New Kingdom of Egypt – the so-called Empire period.

So, I am a millennia forward on the ancient Egyptian timeline this weekend than where I had anticipated being. The New Kingdom of ancient Egypt is the period in which all my books so far have been set.  It’s the time of almost all of the A’List Pharaohs: names such as Tutankhamun, Hatshepsut, Thutmosis (pick a number I – IV), Amenhotep (again, pick a number I – IV), Seti and Ramses.

Of those named Ramses, there numbered eleven in total.  Many sought to emulate, but none was able to recapture the might and majesty of Egypt under Ramses II – the Great.  After Ramses III (known as the last of the warrior pharaohs, and subject of Merry’s next adventure) who ruled approximately 50 years after his more famous forebear, came the long dying. Egypt would never regain its earlier New Kingdom glory.

But there had been an older glory.  The Old Kingdom.  The Pyramid Age. This was already a thousand years in the past when the Ramses ruled, its pyramids already considered tourist attractions.

I have not yet set one of Merry’s Egyptian adventures in the Old Kingdom – so maybe that will have to come. So, to remind me of what I am missing out on this Easter weekend and to perhaps provide some future inspiration, here are some pictures of what I would have been doing in my parallel universe before COVID- 19 took hold:

Fiona Deal, Author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, all available on Amazon.

If you feel like travelling to Egypt this weekend, even if only from your back garden on armchair, you might want to join Merry on her adventures.  Please click on each picture for the link.  Happy Easter, and happy travels.

Another Merry Adventure

There’s nothing quite like a new Amazon review to help one get the writing mojo back:
L. Sheppard reviewed Carter’s Conundrums – Book 1 of Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt: a mystery of modern and ancient Egypt

 

Provocative 
Fiona, I was captivated, romanticised, inspired, thrilled and enlightened by the first instalment of Meredith Pink’s adventures. I read it during the first week of the UK’s coronavirus lockdown and can wholeheartedly say that you’re writing enabled me to disassociate from the stark reality and uncertainties that we as a world are currently facing. For this I am truly grateful – thank you.

So, thank you L. Sheppard, whoever you are. I am now determined to get back into the groove… and if it helps people escape the current awfulness, so much the better…

 

It’s been almost two years since my last published book – Ramses Riches – in the series following Merry’s adventures in Egypt.

 

I took on a whole new area of responsibility at work, which meant a very steep learning curve, and also embarked on a new personal relationship.  All of which rather shoved Merry into the background.

But she has more adventures in Egypt to share, and I am now ready to get going again…

There are nine books so far in the series following Merry’s adventures along the Nile.  I started writing them exactly eight years ago, just after Easter 2012.   So it is definitely time to get going again …

If you’re new to the series, here they are.  They are all available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle versions.

    

 

Nefertari’s Narrative now published

Book number 8 in the series following Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt is now available for download on Amazon sites internationally.

Please click here to find out more or download your copy now.

Nefertari's Narrative - Fiona Deal - book 8When approached with an unexpected job offer, Merry leaps at the chance of a return to Egypt, hoping also to discover what happened to a set of ancient tablets once found in Queen Nefertari’s temple at Abu Simbel. These appear to explain the origins of this mysterious ancient Egyptian Queen.

But once employed on her mission along the Nile, it soon becomes clear all may not be quite as it seems. There are those for whom her new role is both an opportunity and a threat. As a series of unexplained mishaps befall her party, Merry starts to wonder whom she can trust and whether she is the only one hoping to unearth Egypt’s ancient secrets.

The paperback version will be available in a few days.  I do hope you enjoy Merry’s latest adventure.  As ever, I welcome all feedback here on my website.  I read and appreciate all reviews on Amazon.  More adventures are planned for publication in 2018.  Thank you.  Fiona.

 

 

Howard Carter’s Legacy Lives on…

carterHoward Carter died seventy-five years ago on 2 March 1939.  His death went largely unremarked.  This is fairly extraordinary considering Carter was the man responsible for making arguably the most important archaeological discovery ever … the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun, dating from the 14th century BC.

UnknownIt seems astonishing to me that such a spectacular find should earn no accolade at all for its discoverer.  Howard Carter lies buried in an unremarkable grave in a Putney Vale cemetery in London.  Only the words on his grave stone give any clue to the love of Egypt, Egyptology and his world-famous discovery…

Howard Carter,

Egyptologist,

Discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun 1922

“May your spirit live, may you spend millions of years, you who love Thebes, sitting with your face to the north wind, your eyes beholding happiness.”

It’s hardly the most lavish epitaph!

So, why the lack of recognition?  All Carter earned during his lifetime was an honorary doctorate from an American university.  In his own country; nothing.

Carter had a reputation as an irascible man, pig-headed, stubborn and intractable.  He rubbed shoulders with the aristocracy (notably his patron and sponsor the Earl of Carnarvon) yet wasn’t one of them.  Perhaps an incident early in his career in Egypt cast a long shadow. It became known as the Saqqara Affair.  Carter committed career suicide, refusing to apologise to the authorities over an incident where he forcibly ejected a group of rowdy and drunk young Frenchmen from the site of the famous stepped pyramid.  Carter resigned over the incident, halting a hitherto promising career, and entered what have become known as his ‘wilderness years’.  He scratched a living as an artist and antiquities dealer before being recommended as an excavator to Carnarvon.

The rest, as they say, is history.  But Carter’s temper continued to be his Achilles heel.  After Carnarvon’s untimely death just 5 months after the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, Carter once again exploded. This time it was over the refusal of the Egyptian Authorities to allow the wives of the excavation team a private viewing of the tomb.  Carter downed tools and took himself off on a lecture tour of America.

But perhaps more damning were the rumours that started to circulate while he was away that Carter was misappropriating items from the tomb.  A lotus flower head of the boy king was found inside a Fortnum & Mason wine case.  Carter said he’d stored it there for safekeeping until it could be properly conserved.  His explanation was accepted without question, but I wonder if the powers that be were really convinced …?

Whatever, the recognition he might have expected as arguably the most famous excavator of all time never materialised.

Carter returned to England in 1935, having taken 10 years to clear the tomb.  He continued to deal in antiquities for many of the major museums of the world – perhaps considered a dodgy profession…?  He died, aged 65, of lymphoma.

But perhaps the action that meant he could never earn the recognition he deserved was his alleged unauthorised break-in to the tomb the night before its official opening in November 1922.  It’s never been proven, but it’s now achieved the status of something of an open secret.  Carter and Carnarvon, together with Carnarvon’s daughter and their friend Pecky Callender, are said to have broken into both the outer chamber and the burial chamber of the tomb.

I think, if true, it’s hard to blame them.  Which of us can honestly say we could have resisted the temptation after such a long search?

Whatever, rumours of wrong-doing seem to have dogged Carter’s footsteps – and his memory.

Book 1 of Meredith Pink's Adventures in Egypt

Book 1 of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt

These provide fertile soil for a writer of fiction, such as myself.  In the first book in my series following Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, my heroine finds herself caught up in a mystery that draws heavily on the conduct and character of Howard Carter.

So, despite the lack of any public recognition, I’d like to remember the seventy-fifth anniversary of his death, and thank Howard Carter for his legacy.  It was gawping at the Tutankhamun treasures in the Cairo museum as a teenager that sparked my enduring fascination for ancient Egypt … and perhaps that’s when my desire to write was first born.  So, thank you, Mr Carter … your legacy lives on …

Fiona Deal

Author of Carter’s Conundrums, Tutankhamun’s Triumph, Hatshepsut’s Hideaway and Farouk’s Fancies

Pharaoh leaves nothing to chance

Façade, Temple of Seti I, Abydos, Egypt

Façade, Temple of Seti I, Abydos, Egypt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yesterday we visited Abydos, a drive of about 2 hours north from Luxor along the desert road that connects Cairo with Aswan.  Abydos is one of the oldest sites in Egypt and contains archaeological remains from every period of ancient Egypt.

A cult grew up in ancient times that it was the burial place of the god Osiris; and for a thousand years or more ancient Egyptians made pilgrimages to the site to make offerings.

IMG_4438Today, it’s most famous for the temple of Seti I (father to the prodigious builder Ramses II) who ruled at the start of the 19th Dynasty, a little over three thousand years ago.  The quality of the carving, many in raised relief, is outstanding.  The detail on Seti’s crown in this photograph, for example, is exquisite.

IMG_4443The temple is contemporary with the great Hypostyle Hall of pillars at Karnak.  But unlike at Karnak, here at Abydos the original colours of the wall reliefs are beautifully preserved.  Perhaps because of this, the content of the scenes is easy to make out, even for the untrained eye.  Here we have Seti I making offerings before all the major gods of the ancient Egyptian pantheon.  We see him before falcon-headed Horus, ram-headed Knum, ibis-headed Thoth, lion-headed Sekhmet, jackel-headed Anubis and crocodile-headed Sobek.  We see scene after scene of him before Osiris (god of the afterlife) and his wife Isis, with their son Horus.

Temple of Osiris at Abydos

Temple of Osiris at Abydos (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course, these scenes are replicated on temple walls the length and breadth of Egypt.  But what really struck me at Abydos – where they hit you square between the eyes – is how little Pharaoh was prepared to leave to chance.  Literally every square inch of his temple is decorated with scenes of him worshipping the gods.  I’m very sure he was well looked after in the afterlife!

Abydos is also famous for its ‘king-list’.  This is a wall carved from one end to the other with the cartouches of the kings of Egypt who preceded Seti I – from Narmer who unified upper and lower Egypt in the Old Kingdom through the Seti’s father Ramses I.  Notably, there are a few key individuals missing.  Hatshepsut has been left out – possibly because she was a woman.  And the controversial kings of the Amarna period (Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Ay) also fail to get a mention.  The Amarna period was within the living memory of the older folk among the population – a time of social upheaval and religious oppression.

Abydos is a wonderful temple – well worth the drive from Luxor.  And I think my visit may have given me another idea for a book!

Fiona Deal

Author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt.

Book 1 of Meredith Pink's Adventures in Egypt

Book 1 of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt