History
The Baffling Tale of Dorothy Eady
The British woman who claimed to have lived in ancient Egypt
Here’s a historical head scratcher for you. It’s the tale of Dorothy Eady, a 20th-century Egyptologist of some renown. All her life, she claimed to be the reincarnation of a priestess in the cult of Isis — and seemed to have intimate knowledge to back it up. She even knew details that had never been published.
The Childhood Accident that Started It All
Born in London in 1904 to Irish parents, Eady’s remarkable story began at age three. That was when she fell headlong down a flight of stairs in her home and was knocked unconscious. Accounts disagree on what actually happened next. Some say she was pronounced dead before suddenly reviving. Others claim she merely suffered a rare brain injury of some sort, such as foreign accent syndrome.
Whatever the case, the spill forever altered her. For one thing, her speech patterns had noticeably changed. For another, she kept asking her parents to take her home. When they asked where ‘home’ was, the girl couldn’t say. Her mother and father were understandably baffled.
Sometime within the first year of her accident, Dorothy’s parents brought her to an Egyptian exhibit at the British…
