Once one of the oldest cities of Egypt , today Abydos (or 'Abdju' in ancient Egyptian) is a small town of
Sohag
Governorate , almost 180 kilometers to the north of
Luxor
and 480 kilometers to the south of Cairo , near the town of Al Balyana . Abydos city of Abydos was the cemetery of Thinis , the capital of the eighth Nome of Upper Egypt . It was believed that the first part of the legend of
Osiris
(the good god) and
Isis
(his wife , the magical goddess) occurred there , where Osiris' body was buried after
Seth
killed him . As a result of this belief , Abydos was , for many centuries , a city of pilgrimage of the Egyptian common and noble people where ceremonies were held commemorating Osiris' death and rebirth in the afterlife . Pilgrims came in great numbers to make offerings , erect stelae and statues and , some to build tombs .
From the
Predynastic
Period , Abydos , as a sacred and blessed place , was a preferred place to burry the kings and governors of the people of Thinis .
During the Pharaonic and Ptolemaic Periods ,
almost all the pharaohs contributed to the construction of temples and shrines in Abydos , but the most relevant surviving monuments date back to the
Nineteenth Dynasty
such as the temples of
Seti I
and Ramses II .
In Predynastic and early Pharaonic Periods , the local deity of Abydos was Khentiamentiu (Foremost of the Westerners) , but from the end of the
Old Kingdom
the cult of Osiris disseminated on a wide scale and Osiris became one of the most venerated gods of the country .
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