Omm Sety's Living Egypt: Surviving Folkways from Pharaonic Times [Paperback]

Omm Sety (Author), Nicole B Hansen (Editor), Walter A Fairservis (Introduction), Kent R Weeks (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 2007

A special connection with ancient Egypt drew Omm Sety to Egypt, where she studied with the great Egyptologists Selim Hassan and Ahmed Fakhry. For more than four decades she made her home in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Giza and in the mudbrick village surrounding the Temple of Sety I at Abydos. For her, there was no separation between ancient and modern Egypt. Pictures on tomb walls illustrated the games children played in the streets in front of her house. The texts she translated from the temple walls shed light on the origins of the social customs of her Egyptian neighbors. For another four decades this book, which deserves to be called Omm Sety's life work, remained hidden away. Now Nicole B. Hansen, an Egyptologist who specializes in connections between ancient and modern Egypt, brings this work to light in an annotated edition with extensive notes and bibliography, illustrated with Omm Sety's own drawings. It features a foreword by Kent R. Weeks, who rediscovered KV5 in the Valley of the Kings, and an introduction by Walter A. Fairservis, the late director of the Hierakonpolis Project. For Egyptologists, this book includes explanations of texts from the Pyramid Texts to Herodotus as well as ancient Egyptian art. For anthropologists, it represents the results of a lifetime of unbridled participant-observation, during which Omm Sety used folk treatments to cure her ills and agreed to serve as a medium for a spirit during a magic ritual. For those interested in Omm Sety herself, this book provides new insights into her life, the people she knew and the places she lived.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

From a young age, Englishwoman Omm Sety believed herself to be a reincarnated ancient Egyptian. Her childhood was spent in the halls of the British Museum where Egyptologist E. A. W. Budge taught her to read hieroglyphs. In the 1930s, she moved to Egypt, became an Egyptian citizen, continued her studies of Egyptology and worked with the great Egyptian Egyptologists Selim Hassan and Ahmed Fakhry as the first female employee of the Egyptian Antiquities Service.

For more than four decades she made her home in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Giza and in the mudbrick village surrounding the Temple of Sety I at Abydos. For Omm Sety, there was no separation between ancient and modern Egypt. Pictures on tomb walls illustrated the games children played in the streets in front of her house. The texts she translated from the temple walls shed light on the origins of the social customs of her Egyptian neighbours. She immersed herself fully in contemporary Egyptian life, whether serving as spirit medium during a magic ritual or using folk medical treatments on herself. For her, participant-observation was not just an anthropological method for collecting data, it was her way of life.

Omm Sety was featured in a BBC documentary in 1980 and appeared briefly in a National Geographic documentary before her death in 1981. In the 26 years since her death, the public's curiosity about Omm Sety and her life has increased with the publication of two biographies-the first in 1987 written by Jonathan Cott and a more recent one in 2006 by Catherine Dees and Hanny el-Zeini. She is also the author of Omm Sety's Abydos and the ghostwriter of at least three other Egyptology books and a number of articles. However, the book that truly can be called her life's work is Omm Sety's Living Egypt: Surviving Folkways from Pharaonic Times.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Glyphdoctors; annotated edition edition (September 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0979202302
• ISBN-13: 978-0979202308
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #816,392 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)