Dorothy Goe is undoubtedly one of the most unusual women of the 20th century. No, she did not fly into space, was not a Hollywood star, did not get into politics, did not receive the Nobel Prize.
Dorothy became famous in a completely different field. At the beginning of the last century, in a conservative and inert Great Britain, she was not afraid to declare that she was … a new earthly incarnation of the ancient Egyptian priestess.
The activities of Omm Network were highly appreciated by the world community. In 1960, the British Archaeological Society awarded her a pension, and five years later the president of her new homeland awarded her the Order of Merit to Egypt. Omm Seti died in 1981 and, as she had dreamed all her life, was buried in Abydos near the temple of Seti.
This strange story began in 1907. Dorothy, 3, fell from a high staircase and passed out. A doctor was called. He carefully examined the child and declared: the girl is hopeless. About an hour later, the doctor came back with a death certificate and a nurse to "take out the body." But, to his surprise, the "body" was alive, healthy and ran as if nothing had happened!
True, since then something went wrong with the girl. She regularly dreamed about the Egyptian temple and herself in it. And later, visions began to prevail over Dorothy in reality. At such moments, she closed her eyes and began to sway from side to side, and after half an hour she came out of the trance state. Parents tried as best they could to bring their daughter to life, but nothing helped.
The situation worsened after Mr. and Mrs. Idee took their four-year-old daughter to the British Museum. Most of all, the parents were worried about whether the child will be able to withstand the many hours of hiking.
through the museum halls. At first, the girl was really capricious and cried, but as soon as she found herself in the Egyptian halls, not a trace of her former fatigue and bad mood remained.
She began to run around the statues, kiss the feet of the marble giants, and to top it off, she settled down near the glass sarcophagus in which the mummy was, and flatly refused to go further. When Mrs. Idi wanted to drag the girl from her place, she suddenly shouted to the whole hall in a completely alien - adult - voice: "Leave me here, these are my people!"
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NATIVE HOME
With age, the girl's obsession increased. One day her father gave her a volume of a children's encyclopedia. There were several photographs and drawings from the life of Ancient Egypt. Dorothy stared at these pages, spellbound, for days on end. But most of all she was interested in photographs of the Rosetta Stone - a granite slab with three texts, identical in meaning, engraved on it, which gave the key to deciphering the ancient Egyptian writing. The girl spent hours looking at him with a magnifying glass and finally declared that she knew this language, she simply forgot it. Further more.
Once Dorothy discovered in one of the magazines a photograph with the inscription: "Temple of Seti I in Abydos." To the surprise and horror of her parents, she said that she had once lived in this temple, and a beautiful garden was rustling around it. Her father tried to object to her: this building was built a thousand years ago, and besides, there are no gardens in the desert. But the daughter firmly stood her ground: the temple is her home, it was he who constantly appeared to her in her dreams.
Temple of Seti at Abydos
Since then, the girl has become a regular at the Egyptian halls in the British Museum. There she met Ernest Wallis, head of the department of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquity, the author of numerous books on Egyptology. Under the guidance of a scientist, Idi began to study the hieroglyphs and history of Ancient Egypt. Then the girl entered the history department of the University of Oxford. However, she attended meetings of people interested in reincarnation. There she was finally able to openly express her conviction that she had once lived in Ancient Egypt.
MODERN AND ANCIENT
At the age of twenty-seven, Dorothy took a job in a political journal and began writing articles in support of Egyptian independence. Around the same time, she met the Egyptian Imam Abdel Magid. And after two years of courtship, she accepted his offer. In 1933, the girl packed her things and sailed to the country of her dreams.
A year later, the couple had a son, who, at the insistence of his mother and against the will of his father, was named Seti - in honor of the pharaoh who ruled the country around 1300 BC. But the common child did not seal the relationship of the young. "My husband was ultra-modern," Dorothy once remarked, not without sarcasm, "and I was ultra-ancient."
The Imam wanted to settle in the center of Cairo, Dorothy - on the outskirts to see the pyramids. The Imam was interested in the life of modern Egypt, Dorothy - in its glorious past. The husband was annoyed by his wife's night vigils, during which she wrote something in her diary. And for Dorothy it was very important: she claimed that in the light of the moon a voice whispered to her in Egyptian. These overnight automatic writing sessions lasted for about a year. Dorothy then put the messages together and transcribed them.
LOVE OF PHARAOH
In the revelations that Idi opened, it was said that in her past life she came from a poor family and was called Bentreshut. As a girl, she was sent to the temple in Kom el-Sultan, north of the temple of Seti, the construction of which was just beginning, to be raised as a priestess.
At the age of twelve, the high priest asked her if she wanted to return to the world and get married or stay in the temple. Bentreshut chose the latter and took a vow of virginity. Then she underwent special training, which allowed her to participate in temple rituals.
Once during the divine service, Pharaoh Seti I noticed a beautiful young priestess in the temple and fell in love with her. And a few days later, despite the ban, he called her into his bedroom. Over time, Pharaoh and Bentreshut gave birth to a boy whom Seti loved very much.
The idyll lasted for several years until Seti I died while hunting crocodiles. It was then that the priests took out all their anger on Bentreshut. They killed their son, and she herself was thrown into a dungeon, where she died of diseases.
ABIDOS
Meanwhile, Idi's marriage fell apart completely. After three years of married life, the Imam received a post in the Ministry of Education of Iran, and Dorothy moved with her son to the pyramids of Giza. Having got a job as a draftswoman in the Egyptian Department of Antiquities, she became the first woman to be recruited into this institution.
Another twenty years passed before the eccentric Idi realized her cherished dream. “I had only one purpose in life,” she said, “to go to Abydos, live in Abydos and be buried in Abydos. However, something beyond my strength stopped me from visiting Abydos. When she finally made a short visit there in 1952, she immediately went to the Temple of Seti, where she spent the entire night in prayer.
Then she long persuaded her superiors to find her a job in Abydos. They listened to her requests very reluctantly: then Abydos was a tiny village with mud brick houses without running water and electricity, where no one knew a word of English. Officials not without reason considered this place unsuitable for a single woman, especially a foreign woman.
DREAM OF ALL LIFE
In 1956, the management finally gave the go-ahead and gave her a job in Abydos: sketches of temple bas-reliefs for two dollars a day.
By that time, Dorothy's son had moved to his father, and she was free to go wherever she wanted. Immediately Dorothy packed her suitcase and set off for Abydos. There she settled in a modest house, acquired an economy - goats, chickens, a donkey - and became friends with the peasants. Soon, the stranger became a local attraction, and tourists flocked to the small village. Omm Seti - as Dorothy now called herself - knew more about Ancient Egypt than any guide here.
And when, during archaeological excavations, she discovered at the temple of Seti the remains of the very garden that had appeared to her in her dreams all her life, her fame spread far beyond the borders of Egypt. In addition, Omm Seti claimed that somewhere under the temple there was a library with many ancient texts. If it is ever discovered, it will be a real sensation - the same as finding the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Lyubov SHAROVA