Slide courtesy of L.H. Lesko

Omm Sety

Born Dorothy Eady, most of this British eccentric's life was spent in Egypt where she truly believed she had lived a previous life. Considered to have died from a fall when three years old, Dorothy awoke with this delusion and maintained it for her entire life. She married an Egyptian and named her son for the king she had loved in a previous life, thus gaining the name "mother of Sety." After her Egyptian husband divorced her, Omm Sety found work in the Department of Antiquities as a draftsperson and worked with the archaeologist Dr. Selim Hassan who published ten volumes on his Excavations at Giza in which he credits Dorothy Eady for her drawings, editing, and creating indexes for three of the volumes. She studied the ancient Egyptian language and later was hired by Dr. Ahmed Fakhry as an assistant at the pyramid field of Dahshur where she did restoration work in tombs and kept the catalogue of what came out of Fakhry's excavations. After living in Cairo for 19 years, Eady traveled to Abydos, the site of Sety's great and well-preserved temple. Fakhry got her a drafting job there in 1956 and she lived there the rest of her life, stunning people with her very deep knowledge of the temple and its surroundings. Even professional Egyptologists who came to know her were impressed with her knowledge. Her career became the focus of films and books and Eady is regarded as one of the most convincing examples of reincarnation known today.

Author of biography: Barbara S. Lesko
Includes bibliography? Yes

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Keywords: Dorothy Eady, Sety I, Abydos, reincarnation, British Museum, Wallis Budge, Plymouth Art School, Abdel Meguid, Nazlet El Simmam, Selim Hassan, Khentkawes, Ahmed Fakhry, Dahshur, Egyptian Gazette, Ramesses II, American Research Center, Organization of Egyptian Antiquities, Hanny El Zeini, B.B.C., T.G.H. James, Rosalie David, Chicago House, Christopher S. Wren, New York Times, John A.Wilson, Klaus Baer