The story of an English woman who claimed to be the reincarnation of an Ancient Egyptian priestess, Dorothy Louise Eady.
Who was Dorothy Louise Eady?
She was born in January 1904 in England. Until the age of three, she lived her life like a normal child. But unfortunately, one day, she fell down from the stairs. Family doctors said she died. An hour later, a miracle happened. When the doctor returned to take the dead body , he found little Dorothy sitting on the bed playing. But Dorothy was no longer the girl who had fallen down those stairs, as her family would have noticed. Dorothy soon began to dream that she was in a building full of huge columns and gigantic statues. She started talking nonstop to his family about her dreams. She constantly cried and insisted “I want to go home!”
Dorothy’s strange behavior continued. One day, her family went to the British Museum taking her with them. Mr and Mrs Eady expected their children to be bored and restless. Instead, they watched in horror as she admired the museum’s Egyptian galleries and began kissing the feet of the statues as soon as she saw the artifacts there. She sat at the foot of a mummy sealed in a glass case and refused to leave it. Her mother attempted to take her away, but Dorothy said, “Leave me here, these are my people!”
Dorothy’s recurring dreams of columned buildings surrounded by rich vegetation continued. Sometimes she would get extremely upset, cry, and insist to her family to take her home. A few months later, Dorothy came across some photographs of ancient Egypt. She showed her mother the hieroglyphs and said that she knew this language but had forgotten it. When she came across a photo of the “Temple of Seti I in Abydos,” she ran to her father and said, “This is my house! This is where I used to live!
In 1933, after Dorothy married an Egyptian man named Abdel Maguid, she would finally fulfill her wish to be able to go to Egypt. Two had a child. Dorothy named her child Seti, after the 19th Dynasty Pharaoh Seti I. That’s why they called her Omm Sety, which means “Mother of Seti”.
Dorothy’s relationship with Abdel was never strong enough. Dorothy concentrated on Egyptology studies and Abdel was not interested in them. Abdel would occasionally see Dorothy in a trance-like state, getting out of bed late at night and seeing her writing something incomprehensible. Abdel witnessed Dorothy writing 70 pages of hieroglyphic writing in what she later described as the spirit guide “Hor-Ra,” which discusses Dorothy/Omm Sety’s previous life.
This hieroglyphic text was about the life of a young woman in ancient Egypt named Bentreshyt who was reincarnated in the personality of Dorothy Eady. When she was three years old, her mother died and she was placed in the Kom al-Sultan temple because his father could not afford to raise her. There she was raised as a priestess. When she was twelve, the High Priest asked her if she wanted to go into the world or stay and be a blessed virgin. She choosed to be a blessed virgin of goddess Isis. One day Seti I visited and talked to her. They became lovers. When Bentreshyt became pregnant, she told the High Priest who the baby’s father was. The High Priest informed her that the gravity of the crime against Isis was so great that the most likely sentence at a trial would be death. Not wanting to face Seti’s public scandal, she committed suicide instead of being trialed. Abdel’s father once ran away from home, claiming he saw “a pharaoh” sitting at the foot of Omm Sety’s bed.
While the above explanations are surprising and hard to believe, Omm Sety had convinced many skeptics that she was actually the reincarnation of an Ancient Egyptian priestess. In fact, Omm Sety physically pointed out where to find the Temple Garden. They were found after a careful excavation by archaeologists. She also led the archaeologists to a secret tunnel at the north end of the Temple. All these discoveries were based on the memoirs of Omm Sety.
Omm Sety also stated that under the Temple of Seti I there was a library vault containing religious and historical records. This excavation has not yet been done.
Omm Sety became the first woman to find a job in the Department of Antiquities at the Temple of Abydos in 1956. Omm Sety spent the rest of her life in the Temple of Abydos. She lived in a small village house and made the temple a tourist attraction. There she continued her work and restored the temple’s reverence thousands of years ago. Omm Sety passed away on April 21, 1981.
