To most, Abydos was a symbol.
Humanity saw Abydos as its champion: the catalyst which caused the destruction of the greatest of the System Lords, the site where the Tau'ri exploded back into the universe on a wave of triumph and a show of power. The Goa'uld were fallible. The Goa'uld were vulnerable. The odds couldn't be overwhelming if a handful of humans had toppled Ra from the height of power where he'd reigned over his own kind for millennia. The story flew from world to world, as silent and enduring as starsong: the Goa'uld could be killed. The greatest of them all had already been destroyed. For those still enslaved, the tale of Abydos, whispered in the dark, was a lesson in hope.
The people of Earth looked to Abydos for more than inspiration, for it also gave them new horizons. Abydos served as Earth's gateway to the universe. Sister planet, close enough to evade the fatal catch of stellar drift, Abydos had beckoned them into a greater, nearly infinite landscape. Daniel might have handed Earth the keys, but Abydos gave the Tau'ri the map to the galaxy.
The Goa'uld, on the other hand, saw Abydos as both trophy and menace. Ra's greatest source of naquadah, ripe for the taking? It was a deliberate power play for Apophis to harvest hosts from Ra's worlds, including the near-mythological First World and Abydos, where Ra had first settled his Ta'uri slaves. Yet even as Apophis paraded Amaunet's host, an Abydon native, in front of the other System Lords, none could avoid the frisson of unease. Ra was dead. For all their failed scheming and plotting and battles for unchanging generations, Ra had been killed. By humans. Over Abydos. It was a planet that reeked of danger, and it would never be allowed to fade into obscurity.
It was why Anubis so ruthlessly turned the power of the Eyes on Abydos. If he was going to truly assert his standing as master over the other Goa'uld, what greater symbol could he find than the destruction of the site of Ra's death and the Tau'ri's emergence into the galaxy?
Daniel, on the other hand, cannot see Abydos as a symbol. There are labels, to be sure, buried deep beneath the surface of his subconscious, never to be acknowledged: the tangible proof of his theories, his journey through symbolical water and literal fire, the threshold where he paused, teetering, for over a year before toppling into the wider universe. But when Daniel thinks of Abydos, the imagery is more immediate, more real, and infinitely precious.
Because Daniel loves Abydos not as a symbol, but as itself. It is the physical embodiment of the world he has sought in the sands of time and erosion of his life, and he walks across its sands with awe and wonder. It is blessed with a people of passion and courage and spirit, who love and fight and roar with the zest for life that can only be experienced by those who were enslaved and won their freedom. It offers him the ultimate anthropologist's dream in a culture that enchants and maddens all at once. And it grants him a family: a wife of astonishing intelligence and humor, a good father and a good brother, dozens of cousins in bewilderingly complex layers of attachment. He walked away from Earth to embrace Abydos, and for all the frustrations he sometimes encounters, he never truly regrets it.
Even when Sha're dies, and his journey to Abydos is weighted by staggering grief (with that guilty hint of relief that she is at peace, and he'll never say so), there is an odd comfort in knowing that her body, lovingly wrapped in linen folds, lies embraced and cradled by the shifting sands...
And that is why Daniel now huddles on the floor of Teal'c's quarters, shaking uncontrollably, crumpled in on himself. It is why the silent comfort of Teal'c's strong hand on his shoulder goes unnoticed, and the keening wail of despair dies unvoiced in his throat. It is why their quiet session on meditation has been abandoned for the devastation of absolute mourning, and Daniel knows that he will never get the chance to indulge in the serenity of home.
Because Daniel Jackson has remembered what happened to Abydos, and he will never tread across its sands again.