Aby'dos, (1) a town in Asia Minor, situated at the narrowest part of the Hellespont, opposite Sestos.
It is celebrated in history as the place whence Xerxes and his vast army passed into Europe in 480 B.C.; and in poetry on account of the loves of Hero and Leander. Its inhabitants were dissolute and effeminate, but they made a heroic stand against Philip II. of Macedonia.—(2) A city of Upper Egypt, on the left bank of the Nile, once second only to Thebes, but even in the time of Strabo a mere ruin. Here the remains of the Memnonium and of a temple of Osiris are still remarkable; and here was discovered the celebrated Tablet of Abydos, bearing in hieroglyphics a genealogy of the eighteenth dynasty of the Pharaohs. It is now in Paris.