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Abydos! It behoves us to walk here pensively and silently out of respect for all those thousands of souls who formerly turned towards this place, with outstretched hands, in the hour of death.
The first great temple--that which King Seti raised to the mysterious Prince of the Other World, who in those days was called Osiris--is quite close--a distance of little more than 200 yards in the glare of the desert.

We come upon it suddenly, so that it almost startles us, for nothing warns us of its proximity.

The sand from which it has been exhumed, and which buried it for 2000 years, still rises almost to its roof.