49 Facts About Dorothy Eady

Dorothy Eady was keeper of the Abydos Temple of Seti I and draughtswoman for the Department of Egyptian Antiquities.

Dorothy Eady 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.

Dorothy 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 Eady, and raised in a coastal town.

Dorothy Eady was expelled from a Dulwich girls school after she refused to sing a hymn that called on God to "curse the swart Egyptians".

Dorothy Eady ran about the halls of the Egyptian rooms, "amongst her peoples", kissing the statues' feet.

Dorothy Eady became a part-time student at Plymouth Art School and began to collect affordable Egyptian antiquities.

Dorothy Eady took the role of Isis and sang the lamentation for Osiris's death, based on Andrew Lang's translation:.

Dorothy Eady 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.

The story, written by Dorothy Eady, took up around seventy pages of cursive hieroglyphic text.

In 1935, Dorothy Eady separated from her husband when he took a teaching job in Iraq.

Dorothy Eady was the department's first female employee and a boon to Hassan.

Dorothy 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.

Dorothy Eady learned from these scholars the techniques of archaeology, whilst they benefited from her expertise in hieroglyphs and drawing.

Dorothy Eady became the object of village gossip because she would make night prayers and offerings to Horus at the Great Sphinx.

Dorothy Eady was sensitive to the religious observances of others, and would fast with the Muslim villagers during Ramadan and celebrate with Christians at Christmas.

Dorothy Eady saw a common thread joining all periods of Egyptian history; the Pharaonic, the Greco-Roman, the Christian, and the Islamic.

Dorothy Eady 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.

Dorothy Eady reported that Seti I approved of the move.

Dorothy Eady 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 Dorothy Eady left for Abydos.

Dorothy Eady set up home in Arabet Abydos, which sits in the cradle of the mountain Pega-the-Gap.

Dorothy Eady had made short pilgrimages to the site before, during which she had demonstrated her advanced knowledge.

Dorothy Eady was instructed to identify them based on her prior knowledge as a temple priestess.

Dorothy Eady completed the task successfully, even though the painting locations had not yet been published at this time.

Dorothy Eady spent the first two years listing and translating pieces from a recently excavated temple palace.

Dorothy Eady's work was incorporated into Edouard Ghazouli's monograph "The Palace and Magazines Attached to the Temple of Sety I at Abydos".

Dorothy Eady expressed particular thanks to her in this work and was impressed by the skills she showed in translation of enigmatic texts, along with other members of the Antiquities Department.

Dorothy Eady claimed that in her past life as Bentreshyt the temple had a garden, where she had first met Seti I Her descriptions as a young girl were not believed by her parents, but while she was living in Abydos, the garden was found where she said it would be found.

Dorothy Eady turned one of the temple rooms into a personal office, where she carried out her work and befriended a cobra whom she fed on a regular basis, to the alarm of the temple guards.

Dorothy Eady described the Temple of Seti as like entering a time machine, where the past becomes the present and the modern mind has difficulty understanding a world in which magic is accepted.

Dorothy Eady claimed that the scenes depicted on the temple walls were active in the minds of ancient Egyptians on two levels.

Dorothy Eady reported how people would come to her looking for a cure for impotence.

Dorothy Eady said that unusual baby feeding methods used in modern times in Egypt, such as breast milk being supplied via bowl, echoed similar scenes from Pharaonic times.

Dorothy Eady compared the modern Egyptian belief in Afrits with the demonic upside-down beings who appear in the Pyramid Texts.

Dorothy Eady compared this with modern practices, performed by poor sellers in market squares, in which verses of the Koran are inscribed on, or tucked into, amulets.

Dorothy Eady would heal herself by jumping into the sacred pool in the Osireion fully clothed.

Dorothy Eady went to Cairo, but only stayed one day before returning to Abydos.

Dorothy Eady began work as a part-time consultant for the Antiquities Department, guiding tourists around the Temple of Seti and explaining the symbolism of the painted wall scenes.

Dorothy Eady reported in her diary that on first moving into her new home, Seti I appeared and carried out a ritual that consecrated the habitation, bowing reverently towards small statues of Osiris and Isis she kept in a small shrine-niche.

Dorothy Eady spoke of Rameses II, the son of Seti I, whom she always saw as a teenager, as when Bentreshyt first knew him.

Dorothy Eady regarded him, in common with other Egyptologists, as "the most slandered of all the pharaohs" because of biblically derived accounts describing him as the Pharaoh of the Oppression and the slaughterer of baby boys, traits which are contradicted by contemporary records.

Dorothy Eady was in a lot of pain but full of good cheer, and the film crew carried her up to the Temple of Seti for filming.

Dorothy Eady replied that every temple had a book repository, but that the one attached to the Temple of Amun-Ra in Luxor contained all the important documents "from the time of the Ancestors," including those that survived the political upheaval at the end of the 6th dynasty.

Dorothy Eady was a source for modern scholarship seeking to understand how traditional ancient religious practices have survived into modern times, as "folk customs" practiced by modern Egyptian Copts and Muslims.

Dorothy Eady advocated a more honest approach to the study of ancient Egyptian religion, believing that "nobody had made a real effort to go deeply enough into it".

Dorothy Eady admired his open-mindedness, especially since Junker was a Catholic priest.

Dr Labib Habachi, one of "two leading Egyptian archaeologists of his day" and a great admirer of Dorothy Eady's work, claimed that she was a ghost writer.

Dorothy Eady pointed out that there was no independent record, other than her own accounts, to verify what she claimed.

Dorothy Eady's reported experiences enriched her life so much that "it would be an extreme loss to have seen her simply as someone who was hallucinating".