The Real Abydos

The Real Abydos is a place, NOT a planet.
Abydos is the name given to a planet in the Stargate film and TV series. The "Original" was a necropolis on the West bank of the Nile, near the "lost" (well unexcavated as yet) city of This or Thinis, (Egyptian *Tjenu?), the capital of the 8th Nome of Upper egypt and also briefly the Southern capital of the realm during the first two dynasties.

A Necropolis is not just a "city of the dead" but more a "sacred site" or area where the "dead" can safely interface with the living via visits to family tombs , cenotaphs, steles, and temples. Abydos covers an area including the modern village of El-Araba El Madfuna which is 90 miles or 145 kilometers NORTH of modern Luxor (ancient Thebes). Our name Abydos is Latin dervied from the Greek Abudos and the ancient Egyptian name seems to have been *abedjw. Variants of this name are Abdu,Abtu and Abt.

Unlike the situation in the movie the major deity was Osiris NOT RA! In Ancient Egypt Abydos was believed to be the site of the burial of Osiris' head when Seth cut his body into fourteen pieces and scattered the parts throughout the two lands. Other important deities honored at Abydos included:

Wepawet the White Wolf/Jackal, Opener of the Ways, Guardian of Desert Travellers
Anubis the Black Jackal, Guide and Judge of the Dead.
Khentamentiu Foremost of Westerners
Sokar Falcon Guardians of Smiths.

Sokar and Khentamentiu later came to be regarded as aspects of Osiris.

A note here seems to be necessary on the Egyptian concept of a Western Paraside and the idea of western gateways to it. The Western desert - the Sahara was once open grasslands with bodies of open water and rivers and scattered groves of trees and parts of it remained so up to the Early Dynastic period. The Legend of the Beautiful Land of the West may have its basis as a myth in diminished and distorted folk memories of the beautiful pasture lands of the western savanna lost to post - glacial desertification and over grazing which forced the Neolithic pastoralists into the Nile Valley.

One of the most striking features of Abydos (I should note here I have never been there in person - these notes derive from other people's plans, maps, observations and photos) is NOT a pyramid spaceship but the long line of western cliffs and the strange eerie area of mounds below them - The Umm el-Qaab - Mother of Pots - an area of tombs and temples and deposits of thousands of pieces of discarded ceramics bulit up over centures of burials from the Neolithic onwards. It is an area where the debris is history is a literal actual thing not just a concept in an archaeological text.

Places Particularly of Interest in Abydos

the Tomb of Djer - Dynasty One later regarded as the Tomb of Osiris
the Thinite Rulers' Tombs and the Komm el-Sultan Mound
various Middle Kingdom sites, steles and cenotaphs

Seti 1 - Osireion - now partly flooded.


Next to it is a temple complex including chapels to Osiris, Isis, Horus, Amun-Ra, and Ra as Harakte(RA equated with Horus of the Horizon), also Ptah, Sokar, and Nefertum.Begun by Seti 1 this complex was completed by Ramesses 2 (the Great) and is noteworthy for its many outstanding bas reliefs and paintings


The Rameses 2 Temple is also recommended.


Another major site is the Shunet El-Zebib "the raisin store", the tomb of Khasekhemwy (Soul of two powers), a Second dynasty temple. This still impressive mud brick building originally had a limestone plaster coating of color and an elaborate outer facade of butresses and recesses.




Abydos is also noted for its various predynastic burials and important discoveries are still being made there including a recent find of pots labelled with glyphs in a system ancestral to later hieorglyphs!



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