EXCAVATIONS AT ABYDOS.! 
By Epvovarp NAvILLE.? 
[With 3 plates.] 
I. THE TOMB OF OSIRIS. 
There was a city in Egypt called by the Greeks Abydos. This is 
an example of a popular etymology or rather popular transcription. 
Its Egyptian name was ‘About,’ which through resemblance of 
sound recalled the distant well-known Grecian city of Abydos on 
the Hellespont, made famous by the passage of the army of Xerxes, 
and led to calling the Egyptian city by that name. It played no 
part in the political world, but became famous chiefly as a place for 
the worship of Osiris; one could almost call it a Mecca of pilgrims. 
Osiris, the most human god of the Egyptian pantheon, had been cut 
into pieces by his rival, Set, or Typhon; but his son Horus had 
brought him back to life by reconstructing his body. His tomb 
however, was at Abydos, though we do not know whether it con- 
tained the body of the god, or as Greek writers say, only his head. 
On account of the sanctity of the place, the Egyptians liked to be 
buried there, and very few localities contained cemeteries so rich, 
belonging to all epochs from the neolithic age down to the Roman 
Empire. Kings had there built temples most of which, excepting 
two, have been destroyed, though one in particular, built by Séti I, 
of the nineteenth dynasty, the father of Rameses II, has remained 
almost in its entirety. It was unearthed by Mariette. It is a large 
temple which was completed by Rameses. In the part built by 
Séti there are some of the most beautiful sculptures in Egypt, but 
from father to son the style changed completely, the work of Rameses 
being hastily done with the carelessness oe ae so many of 
his monuments. 
The temple of Séti is what is called a memnonium, that.is, an 
edifice in connection with a tomb and in which they rendered services 
to the dead. Since it is dedicated to Osiris, it seemed uals that 
the tomb of this god might be in this vicinity. 
1 Translated by permission from Archives Suisses d’ Anthropologie générale, Geneva, May, 1914. 
,? This article consists of two letters which were originally written to the Journal de Genéve on Feb. 
26 and Mar. 17, 1914, while the excavations were carried on. This explains why they do not agree 
completely. After an interval of three weeks I could describe new discoveries, and especially that 
of the edifice, the great pool which I did not suspect when I wrote the first letter.—Ed. N. 
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