Dorothy Louise Eady (16 January 1904 – 21 April 1981), also known as Omm Sety or Om Seti (), was a British antiques caretaker and folklorist. She was keeper of the Abydos Temple of Seti I and draughtswoman for the Department of Egyptian Antiquities. She is known for her belief that in a previous life she had been a priestess in ancient Egypt, as well as her considerable historical research at Abydos. Her life and work have been the subject of many articles, television documentaries, and biographies.
Early life
Louise Eady was born in London in 1904 as the only child to Reuben Ernest Eady, a master tailor born in Woolwich, and Caroline Mary (Frost) Eady, and raised in a coastal town.Hansen, 2008, p. xiv At the age of three, after falling down a flight of stairs and briefly appearing to be dead, she began exhibiting strange behaviours, asking that she be "brought home".Hansen, 2008, p. xv She had also developed foreign accent syndrome. This caused some conflict in her early life. Her Sunday school teacher requested that her parents keep her away from class, because she had compared Christianity with "heathen" ancient Egyptian religion.Cott, p. 15 She was expelled from a Dulwich girls school after she refused to sing a hymn that called on God to "curse the swart Egyptians". Her regular visits to a Roman Catholic church to hear the Catholic Mass, which she liked because it reminded her of the "Old Religion", were terminated after a visit to her parents and an interrogation by a Roman Catholic priest.Cott, pp. 15–16
After being taken by her parents to visit the British Museum, and on observing a photograph in the New Kingdom temple exhibits room, the young Eady called out "There is my home!" but "where are the trees? Where are the gardens?" The temple was that of Seti I, the father of Rameses the Great.Hansen, 2008 She ran about the halls of the Egyptian rooms, "amongst her peoples", kissing the statues' feet.Lesko After this trip, she took every opportunity to visit the British Museum rooms. There, she eventually met E. A. Wallis Budge, who was taken by her youthful enthusiasm and encouraged her in the study of hieroglyphs.Hansen, 2008, p. xix–xvLesko
After a close escape from a bombing raid during World War I, she moved to her grandmother's house in Sussex. Here, she continued her study of ancient Egypt at the Eastbourne public library. When she was fifteen, she described a nocturnal visit from the mummy of Pharaoh Seti I.Lesko; El Zeini, p. 22;
Her behaviour, coupled with sleep walking and nightmares, led her to be incarcerated in sanatoriums several times. On leaving school at sixteen, she visited museums and archaeological sites around Britain, facilitated by her father's investigations into the nationwide booming cinema industry.El Zeini, p. 32-33 who notes during a visit to Stonehenge she found Egyptian mummy beads, "not the first" such find of beads "or even scarabs" at the site which he takes as evidence of trade between the Mediterranean and the British Isles
Eady became a part-time student at Plymouth Art School and began to collect affordable Egyptian antiquities. During her period at Portsmouth, she became part of a theatre group that on occasion performed a play based on the story of Isis and Osiris. She took the role of Isis and sang the lamentation for Osiris's death, based on Andrew Lang's translation:
At the age of twenty-seven, she began working in London with an Egyptian public relations magazine, for which she wrote articles and drew cartoons that reflected her political support for an independent Egypt. During this period she met her future husband Emam Abdel Meguid, an Egyptian student, with whom she continued to correspond when he returned home.
Move to Egypt In 1931, she moved to Egypt after Emam Abdel Meguid, by now a teacher of English, asked her to marry him. On arriving in Egypt, she kissed the ground and announced she had come home to stay. The couple stayed in Cairo and her husband's family gave her the nickname ('nightingale'). Their son was named Sety, from which is derived her popular name Omm Sety ('Mother of Sety').Hansen, 2008, p. xvi; After a chance meeting with George Reisner's secretary, who commented on her apparent ability to charm snakes and told her that spells on such powers were in early ancient Egyptian literature, Eady visited the Fifth Dynasty pyramid of Unas.El Zeini, p. 59 Klaus Baer recalled her piety when she accompanied him on a visit to Saqqara in the early 1950s, when she brought an offering and took off her shoes before entering Unas' pyramid.Cott, p. 56;Man, Myth & Magic, vol 1/7, p. 305 She continued to report apparitions and out-of-body experiences during this time, which caused friction with the upper-middle-class family she had married into.
Nighttime visions of Hor-Ra During her early period, Eady reported nighttime visitations by an entity called Hor-Ra who she claimed was the spirit of Seti I. Eady stated that Hor-Ra slowly dictated to her, over a twelve-month period, the story of her previous life.Cott, p. 42 The story, written by Eady, took up around seventy pages of cursive hieroglyphic text. It described the life of a young woman in ancient Egypt, called Bentreshyt, who had reincarnated in the person of Dorothy Eady.Cott, p. 42; Bentreshyt (meaning 'Harp of Joy') is described in this text as being of humble origin, her mother a vegetable seller and her father a soldier during the reign of Seti I ( to 1279 BC). When she was three, her mother died, and she was placed in the temple of Kom el-Sultan because her father could not afford her. There, she was brought up to be a priestess. When she was twelve years old, the High Priest asked her if she wished to go out into the world or stay and become a consecrated virgin. In the absence of full understanding and without a practical alternative, she took the vows.
During the next two years, she learned her role in the annual drama of Osiris's passion and resurrection, a role that only virgin priestesses consecrated to Isis could perform.Cott, p. 42; cf. El Zeini, p. 34 One day, Seti I visited and spoke to her. They became lovers, eating "the uncooked goose", an ancient Egyptian term that has been compared to "eating the forbidden fruit". When Bentreshyt became pregnant, she told the High Priest who the father was. The High Priest informed her that the gravity of the offence against Isis was so terrible that death would be the most likely penalty at a trial.Cott, p. 5-6 Unwilling to face the public scandal for Seti, she committed suicide rather than face trial.Cott, p. 6
Work with Selim Hassan and Ahmed Fakhry In 1935, Eady separated from her husband when he took a teaching job in Iraq. Their son Sety stayed with her.Lesko; El Zeini (2007) describes the incredulous response of the midwife to Eady's pain-free traditional birth (p. 65) and the Islamic ceremony El Sebou relating to the naming of the baby involving placing the baby on a sieve, harking back to an Ancient Egyptian custom in which Anubis holds the sieve to determine the child's life span: an example of the ceremony appears on the walls of Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el Bahri.(p. 66, fn) Two years after the marriage broke down, she went to live in Nazlat al-Samman near the Giza pyramids, where she met the Egyptian archaeologist Selim Hassan of the Department of Antiquities, who employed her as his secretary and draughtswoman. She was the department's first female employee and a boon to Hassan.Hansen, 2008, p. xvi, Lesko; El Zeini, p. 81 According to Barbara Lesko, "She was a great help to Egyptian scholars, especially Hassan and Fakhry, correcting their English and writing English-language articles for others. So this poorly educated Englishwoman developed in Egypt into a first-rate draughtswoman and prolific and talented writer who, even under her own name, produced articles, essays, monographs and books of great range, wit and substance."
Through her keen interest in antiquities, she met and befriended many of the famous Egyptologists of the era.Cott, p. 47 Eady made such a significant contribution to Hassan's work that upon his death she was employed by Ahmed Fakhry during his excavations at Dashur.Hansen, 2008, p. xvi Hassan's magnum opus, the ten-volume "Excavations at Giza", gives "special mention, with sincere gratitude" to Eady for her editing, drawing, indexing, and proofreading work.Cott, p. 46 She learned from these scholars the techniques of archaeology, whilst they benefited from her expertise in hieroglyphs and drawing.
During this time she prayed, made frequent offerings to the gods of ancient Egypt, and would often spend the night in the Great Pyramid.Lesko, p. 50 Eady became the object of village gossip because she would make night prayers and offerings to Horus at the Great Sphinx.El Zeini, p. 82 Yet she also was respected by the villagers for her honesty in not hiding her true faith in the Egyptian gods. She was sensitive to the religious observances of others, and would fast with the Muslim villagers during Ramadan and celebrate with Christians at Christmas.Cott, p. 59
Her associations with the workers and their families gave her first-hand experience of contemporary Egyptian life. She saw a common thread joining all periods of Egyptian history; the Pharaonic, the Greco-Roman, the Christian, and the Islamic. This thread was the Nile, which animated people's lives on many levels.Hansen, 2008, p.; See also Naguib essay "Survivals of Pharaonic Religious Practices in Contemporary Coptic Christianity", Encyclopedia of Egyptology, UCLA, 2008, quote "..the Coptic renewal and, from the 1970s, the radicalization of religion among both Copts and Muslims have led to the consolidation of normative religion and the abandonment of most religious practices belonging to the Egyptian lore" and that "Cultural changes usually occur as part of long processes of transformation. However, some changes may trigger rapid changes in a culture's structures, generate innovations, and bring about new ways of life. The construction of the Aswan High Dam was such an event. Inaugurated in January 1971, the Aswan High Dam has radically altered Egypt's ecology and led to the disappearance of most rituals and religious practices related to the Nile and its inundation. It has modified a cumulative body of local knowledge and made the agricultural calendar meaningless. Nevertheless, some religious practices tied to seasonality of the Nile are still recognizable in Coptic Christianity."
Move to Abydos Ahmed Fakhry's Dashur Pyramid Research Project was terminated in early 1956, leaving Eady unemployed. Fakhry suggested that she "climb the Great Pyramid; and when you reach the top, just turn west, address yourself to your Lord Osiris and ask him "Quo vadis?" (which means "Where are you going?" in Latin). He offered her a choice of taking a well paid job in the Cairo Records Office, or a poorly paid position in Abydos as a draughtswoman. She chose the latter.Cott, p. 69–70 She reported that Seti I approved of the move. He claimed that the "wheel of fate" was turning and this would be a time of testing; if she was chaste, she would undo the ancient sin of Bentreshyt dictated to her by Hor-Ra.
On 3 March 1956, the fifty-two-year-old Eady left for Abydos.Cott, p. 71 She set up home in Arabet Abydos, which sits in the cradle of the mountain Pega-the-Gap. The ancient Egyptians believed this mountain led to Amenti and the afterlife. It was here that she began to be called 'Omm Sety', because it was customary in Egyptian villages to refer to a mother by the name of her eldest child.Cott, p. 81
Abydos had a special significance for her, because it is where she believed Bentreshyt had lived and served in the Temple of Seti.Cott, p. 78 She had made two brief pilgrimages to the site in the early 1950s.