[Music] hello and welcome to today's lecture on the ancient egyptian city and cemetery of abidos i'm your professor dr rob steffen and today we're going to zoom in on a single site to see what it can reveal about kingship and culture in ancient egypt now choosing a site to investigate for the middle kingdom in egypt is a little bit tricky the capital city of the 12th dynasty the the peak of the middle kingdom was a new town called ichtawi and archaeologists have never actually discovered this place abidos on the other hand is one of the most important sites in egypt not just in the middle kingdom but throughout the entire 3000 years of egyptian antiquity so whether you're looking to bury a pharaoh or simply want to worship osiris journey with me as we investigate abios city of osiris [Music] the city of abidos is one of the oldest most important sites throughout the entire history of ancient egypt abidos is located in upper egypt remember that's in the south just above the bend in the nile river where the famous sites of lux were incarnate and deebs were the name of baidos is what the ancient greeks called the town hellenizing the ancient egyptian name for it that process the hellenization of egyptian names is really where we get most of the place names we have for ancient egypt abdu becomes abidos men nefer becomes memphis ta'ope becomes thebes so just keep that in mind as we move forward with the course so we've been talking a lot about the middle kingdom recently but to understand abidos you have to go back way back all the way to the beginning of ancient egypt and actually even a little earlier so one section of abidos was the home of the tombs of the pre-dynastic and early dynastic kings the area of the site is known as um el gabe in arabic which literally translates as the mother of pots due to all the pottery sherds that litter the site grave goods in these early early tombs these come from devotional followers who brought offerings to the dead kings of egypt's earliest days one of the earliest important tombs at the umel gob section of abidos is called tomb u-j which is thought to be the tomb of the scorpion king one of the last rulers of upper egypt during the pre-dynastic period this tomb is incredibly important not just because it's the resting place of that king but also because archaeologists have argued it provides our earliest evidence for writing in ancient egypt vessels with payment hieroglyphs seals on those vessels and ivory tags labeling the contents of those vessels people think that writing a rose when the logograms pictures representing specific words the contents of vessels in this case eventually evolved into phonograms symbols that represent sounds pretty impressive development scorpion king but but all the other uh legends are here too right king narmer unifier of egypt is buried here as well as king den who some archaeologists believe had his entire retinue of attendant sacrificed along with him and kings were buried here all the way through the second dynasty before joseph the first king of the third dynasty built the world's first pyramid at saqqara because of abidos's connection with death and the burial of early kings the site became closely associated with the god of the underworld in afterlife osiris the god osiris is one of the early generations of egyptian gods he's the son of geb representative of the earth and newt representative of the sky his siblings are isis whom he's also married to seth his younger brother and nephthys his younger sister oh and neptus and seth are married as well as the oldest osiris was the god of the living and he provided early egyptians with all the trappings of civilization law and religion irrigation and agriculture culture and education in short egypt under the rule of osiris was like the garden of eden now this of course pissed off his brother set who was even more pissed off because his wife neptus had the hots for osiris slept with him and bore the jackal-headed god of mummification to god we call anubis so seth got crafty literally and figuratively and he designed an ornate beautiful coffin to the exact specifications of osiris's body he then threw a big party and held the contest he said whoever fit perfectly within the coffin would win it as a prize but of course when osiris got in he did indeed fit perfectly but then seth nailed the coffin shut trapping him inside he then set the dang thing down the nile river this is why little brothers are literally the worst then the adventure really begins the coffin eventually ended up in phoenicia and osiris's wife isis had to go all the way there to get it back from queen estarte and once she returned she had to go in search of a potion to restore life to osiris she put her sister neptus in charge of guarding his coffin but seth eventually convinced nephthys to reveal the location of osiris's coffin went in search of that coffin found osiris chopped him into pieces and scattered those pieces across the nile river isis and nepthus went out to gather the pieces of osiris and amazingly they found them all except for the most important one his divine member had been eaten by an oxyrincus fish and that's why aksarinka's fish were forbidden to be eaten in ancient egypt isis then pieced the rest of osiris back together perhaps signaling the origin of mummification and somehow in some weird way mated with the penis-less osiris she then bore horus and when osiris decided he was better off ruling the underworld horus challenged and triumphantly defeated seth to become the god of the living and the patron god of kingship [Music] because of his association with death in the underworld osiris became the patron god of the city of abados and this makes sense with all the kings of the pre-dynastic and early dynastic periods that are buried at the site there are actually several temples to osiris at the site of abidos so let's start with the earliest one the great temple of osiris was constructed in the northwestern part of abidos and dates all the way back to the first dynasty around 3000 bce over the next two thousand years it was expanded and restored and redesigned and all this action makes it tough to distinguish different phases this is especially so because the temple was made in large part of mud brick that has eroded over the centuries what we do know is that the great temple of osiris was the starting point for the annual festival and mysteries of osiris during this festival the cult statue the literal embodiment of the god was put on top of a boat and the whole boat was marched in a possession from the temple of osiris to umalgad the cemetery of abidos where one of the early tombs was thought to be that of osiris himself the festival itself took place in two parts the first focused on the procession of two osiris statues from the temple of osiris to the legendary tomb of osiris this was public and people often came to witness the procession of the statue with the hope of gaining some benefit from the god's powers over death and rebirth often if the individuals themselves weren't able to attend they would set up a stila an inscribed stone representing the individual then a small chapel on a ledge overlooking the procession route we'll hear more about this in just a bit the second part of the festival is far less understood this was performed inside the temple or tomb only open to the priests it was here that the secret writes of osiris assumedly focused on his death and rebirth were conducted outside the gaze of the viewing public we know of these rights only from the much later writer plutarch who lived about 000 years after the middle kingdom and he describes the mysteries as having to do with the recreation of osiris made of like soil and grain which was then watered and then the growth of the grain stocks represents the rebirth of osiris so imagine making him out of like fertile soil growing seeds within him and that signals his rebirth during the middle kingdom the god osiris rose in importance amongst the egyptian pantheon we can see this and learn more about the osiris festival in an inscription known as the iker no fred stila iker no fred was the royal treasurer under senusrit iii of the twelfth dynasty the stila made of limestone depicts osiris under a winged sun disk and even though it was set up by an official the king sanuzrit iii faces osiris directly the stealer describes the festival as follows the public festival lasted five days and was essentially a recreation of the life death and rebirth of osiris on day one there's a mock battle where the enemies of osiris are defeated day two then consists of the transportation of the osiris statue on the boat from the temple to the tomb during this journey the statue must be defended from attackers day three concerns the mourning for the death of osiris and day four consists of prayers in the funerary rituals for the deceased osiris the final day day five consists of the rebirth of osiris and rejoicing by the public attendees the kings of the middle kingdom also focused their efforts on the temple of osiris to begin meant to hotep the first of the 11th dynasty added both a colonnade and altars to the temple next mantu hotep ii the first king of the middle kingdom rebuilt the whole temple upon his ascension to the throne at the start of the twelfth dynasty sinusoid the first rebuilt once again paving over meant to hotep's construction laying a new foundation and expanding the sacred wall around the precinct so we see that in the middle kingdom pharaohs helped facilitate the rise and importance of osiris they constructed and reconstructed temples at abidos and they along with their staff and priesthood also played a key role in the rituals and festivals surrounding the god of the underworld [Music] even though we've been talking primarily about obidos during the middle kingdom we can't leave today's lecture without talking about its best preserved feature the temple of seti the first seti the first was actually a new kingdom pharaoh ruling during the first quarter of the 13th century bce about 500 years after the peak of the middle kingdom but his temple at abidos dwarfed all others even that of osiris and is to this day an important source of evidence for the history of kingship in egypt so the temple itself was built in the eastern part of abidos on entirely new ground and out of all the tombs and temples at the site the temple of seti the first remains the most complete and best preserved the temple itself was built to honor seti as well as the egyptian pharaohs who came before him and for our purposes as egyptologists perhaps the most important aspect of the temple is the famous abidos king lists which lists all the pharaohs starting way back with king mennis which you might recall from benito's text in the first dynasty and going all the way until ramsay's the first the father of seti who built the temple scholars have found that the king list was so important in reconstruction reconstructing the history of egyptian pharaohs that they liken it to the rosetta stone in terms of its importance the temple would have been originally entered through a large pylon an impressive facade meant to symbolize the sun rising behind the primordial mound from there you head through the royal pillisters into a second courtyard which leads to two hypo style halls rooms filled with columns shaped like papyrus weeds once you make your way through the columns you arrive at a series of seven shrines dedicated to the king and the main gods of egypt including of course osiris these chapels were decorated with rituals associated with the festivals of those gods like the pouring of libations to the god osiris seti's temple had a special focus on osiris the small osiris chapel opened up to a special room behind the other chapels this was entirely dedicated to osiris with all the imagery focused on themes of death and rebirth and here we can see seti making offerings to osiris isis offering eggs in the depiction of the egyptian phoenix [Music] the city of abidos is undoubtedly one of the most important sites in all of ancient egypt it served as the actual resting place of egypt's earliest pharaohs like the scorpion king and narmer and the legendary resting place of the gods like osiris who would one day become the patron god of the city and of the underworld as osiris rose in importance during the middle kingdom rulers such as mentor hotep ii and senuzret iii added and modified the great temple of osiris and participated intimately in the festivals that concerned the rebirth and resurrection of the god of the underworld abidos shows us just how important connections with the dead and what the gods of the dead can be for the living just a couple lessons you can take away from [Music] you