Abydos
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Abydos. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
An ancient city of Mysia, in Asia Minor, founded by the Thracians. Between this point and the city of Sestos, Xerxes built a bridge of boats across the Hellespont, and here reviewed his vast hosts preparatory to invading Greece. Abydos, too, is famous as being the scene of the loves of Hero and Leander . Hero, a beautiful maiden dedicated to the service of Venus , was loved by the youth Leander, who nightly swam across the Hellespont to pay his vows to the fair priestess of Venus. One stormy night, while attempting his accustomed task, the daring youth was drowned. In the morning, Hero found his lifeless body on the shore and in her despair cast herself into the sea. The story has been treated by many ancient poets and some modern ones, among them Byron, who himself swam the Hellespont at the same point where Leander was supposed to have done so to prove that the task was not impossible. Byron, in the "Bride of Abydos," thus refers to the death of Leander: "The winds are high on Helle 's wave As on that night of stormy water," etc.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a town and castle of Anatolia, on the Straits of Gallipoli. In its neighborhood Xerxes, when he invaded Greece, crossed with his immense army the Hellespont, on a bridge of boats. Memorable also from being the scene of the loves of Hero and Leander, and from Byron having adopted its name in his "Bride of Abydos." Also an ancient city of Upper Egypt, on the left bank of the Nile, supposed to have been the ancient This, and to have been second only to Thebes.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both entries treat Abydos as chiefly a classical name, and Collier's in 1921 gives the Egyptian Abydos only a line, "supposed to have been the ancient This." That Egyptian site has since become one of the most important in Egyptology: Flinders Petrie's work around 1900 at Umm el-Qa'ab identified the tombs of Egypt's earliest kings, including Narmer and Den, and the tomb labelled U-j there yielded inscribed tags dated to about 3250 BC, among the earliest writing known from Egypt. Abydos is now understood as the burial ground of the nearby town of Thinis rather than Thinis itself, and excavation continues " in 2014 a team announced the tomb of a previously unknown pharaoh, Senebkay, from a local dynasty of about 1650 BC. The Asian Abydos, on the Dardanelles near Çanakkale, has no town today, and the Hero and Leander story â with Byron's 1810 swim â stands exactly as told.
Written for this edition, 2026.