In 1903, working under Flinders Petrie at Abydos, Margaret Murray began uncovering a buried passage behind the temple of Seti I. Over the next three decades excavators dug down into something that did not look like the temple above it at all: a sunken hall of enormous red granite pillars and lintels, plain, heavy and largely without inscriptions, sitting today in groundwater.
That structure is the Osireion. Mainstream Egyptology identifies it as part of Seti I’s building program in the Nineteenth Dynasty, around 1290 BC, a symbolic tomb or cenotaph of the god Osiris. In Echoes of History I describe the Osireion as one of Egypt’s most puzzling structures, possibly older than the pharaohs, built for function rather than decoration, with a purpose that may have involved the Earth’s magnetic field and the power of water.
In this article
- Where is the Osireion and what does it look like?
- Who built the Osireion? The mainstream case
- What Echoes of History says about the Osireion
- Obelisks, stones and power
- The Book and the Egyptologist at Abydos
Where is the Osireion and what does it look like?
The Osireion lies directly behind the temple of Seti I at Abydos, in Upper Egypt. Abydos was the holiest city of Osiris, god of the afterlife, and one of Egypt’s oldest burial grounds; the kings of the First Dynasty were buried in its desert cemetery at Umm el-Qa’ab.
Most of the Osireion is underground, cut into the bedrock and partly buried under sand. At its centre is a hall on a raised platform, ringed by a trench-like channel that probably held water. In the book I suggest this water symbolized the primeval waters of creation in Egyptian belief. Two rows of towering pillars, each a single block of red granite brought from distant quarries, hold up massive lintels. Some of the stones weigh more than a hundred tons.
The room is almost bare. There are none of the carved scenes, painted gods or statues that fill Seti’s temple a few metres away.
Who built the Osireion? The mainstream case
The question was argued by excavators themselves.
Édouard Naville, who cleared the central hall in 1912 to 1914, was struck by the huge plain granite and compared it with the valley temple at Giza. He thought it might be one of the oldest buildings in Egypt. Henri Frankfort, who excavated it between 1925 and 1930 for the Egypt Exploration Society, came to the opposite view. He recorded inscriptions of Seti I in the structure, along with religious texts and an astronomical ceiling in its inner chambers, and published it in 1933 as The Cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos. The entrance passage carries decoration from the reign of Seti’s grandson Merenptah.
Today the American Research Center in Egypt, working with the World Monuments Fund, identifies the Osireion with Seti I while admitting that much about it remains little understood. Its recent conservation work reported an original transport ramp, cut into the shale bedrock north of the building, which the team interprets as a route for moving the large blocks before the structure was backfilled.
The Egyptologist’s reading of the design is religious. The island surrounded by water imitates the primeval mound rising from the waters of creation, and the plain granite evokes the archaic tomb of Osiris. Seti’s temple next door, with its famous Abydos King List naming his predecessors back to Menes, shows a king deeply concerned with ancestry and the ancient past. Plain old-looking architecture, in this view, was a deliberate choice.
What Echoes of History says about the Osireion
I do not take the Seti I date as settled. “Dating the Osireion has sparked heated debates among scholars,” I write, and some argue its architecture and materials point to a far older beginning, perhaps before the pharaohs.
Three features keep that question open for me.
The first is the stone. Many people ask how blocks of more than a hundred tons could have been moved and set with the tools of the New Kingdom. (For comparison, Seti’s own temple next door is built of far smaller limestone blocks.)
The second is the lack of decoration. Seti I’s temple is one of the most finely carved in Egypt. The Osireion’s main hall has no hieroglyphs on its great pillars and no statues. The layout, as I put it, “suggests a focus on functionality over decoration.” It was built for a specific purpose, not for ornament.
The third is precision. The structure is aligned with true north, which points to a sophisticated understanding of astronomy and mathematics.
What was that purpose? I don’t claim to know it exactly. The water channel and the bedrock setting suggest to me a use of the Earth’s magnetic field and water power in advanced ways. Its exact function, I admit in the book, “continues to elude us.”
It also sits inside a wider pattern I describe across Egypt. Advanced builders made great structures without writing on them, and less advanced later rulers added their inscriptions, often claiming work they did not do. Egyptologists themselves accept that Ramses II put his name on statues made by earlier kings. A bare granite hall beside a heavily inscribed temple invites the same question.
Obelisks, stones and power
The Osireion is one example among many. The obelisks of Egypt alone, I write, tell the tale of a civilization that drew great power from stone. Don’t assume the obelisks standing in Rome, Paris, London and New York were carried off only as ornaments. The people who went to such lengths to move them understood some of their hidden secrets. And in museums around the world, including the Vatican, there are artifacts taken from Egypt that tell a story different from the mainstream one.
The Book and the Egyptologist at Abydos
The Book: Stand at the edge and look down. Then look at Seti’s temple. Same king, you tell me. Do they look like the work of the same people?
The Egyptologist: They look like the work of the same people with two different purposes. A temple for daily cult is carved and painted. A symbolic tomb for Osiris is meant to look primeval.
The Book: You’re asking me to believe Seti could fake antiquity with hundred-ton granite while building his own temple out of small blocks.
The Egyptologist: I’m asking you to look at the evidence on site. Frankfort found Seti’s inscriptions in the structure, and texts of his reign in the inner rooms.
The Book: Look at the hall itself, with its great pillars. It is bare. Kings wrote their names on older works all the time. Ramses II did it so often your colleagues have a word for it.
The Egyptologist: Usurpation happens, yes. But usurpers recarve. They don’t build a matching entrance passage, a matching set of chambers and a ramp for the construction. ARCE found the ramp in the shale, right where it would be for Seti’s builders.
The Book: A ramp tells me someone moved stones there at some point. It doesn’t tell me which stones, or when the hall was first built.
The Egyptologist: It was part of the backfill sequence. That ties it to building the structure, not to later repairs.
The Book: Then explain the pillars. Single blocks of red granite from Aswan, more than a hundred tons, lowered into a trench. Why go to that trouble for a symbol?
The Egyptologist: Because it mattered to them. Egyptians spent enormous effort on religious symbols. Granite meant permanence.
The Book: I agree it mattered. I think it mattered because it worked, not because it looked old. Naville saw what I see. He stood in that hall and thought of the Giza valley temple.
The Egyptologist: And Frankfort spent five seasons there and changed the date. Naville’s impression was a reasonable first guess. It didn’t survive excavation.
The Book: Maybe. The hall is still bare, though, and the water is still there.
FAQ
What is the Osireion?
The Osireion is a largely underground structure behind the temple of Seti I at Abydos in Upper Egypt. It has a central hall of massive red granite pillars and lintels surrounded by a water channel. Egyptologists see it as a cenotaph, or symbolic tomb, of the god Osiris built by Seti I.
How old is the Osireion?
Most Egyptologists date it to Seti I, around 1290 BC, following Henri Frankfort’s excavations of 1925 to 1930, which recorded Seti’s inscriptions there. Édouard Naville, who worked there earlier, thought it far older. Echoes of History says its design and materials hint at an origin before the pharaohs.
Why does the Osireion flood with water?
The structure lies below the present water table, so groundwater fills its lower levels and the channel around the central hall. Egyptologists think water was part of the design, recreating the primeval mound rising from the waters of creation. The book also links the water to the creation waters and to a possible use of water power.
What does Echoes of History say the Osireion was for?
The book says the Osireion was built for function rather than decoration, given its bare hall, hundred-ton blocks and alignment with true north. It suggests its purpose may have involved the Earth’s magnetic field and water power, while admitting the exact function is still unknown.
Sources
- Henri Frankfort, The Cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos (Egypt Exploration Society, 1933)
- American Research Center in Egypt, “Rediscovering Abydos with the World Monuments Fund,” arce.org
- David O’Connor, Abydos: Egypt’s First Pharaohs and the Cult of Osiris (Thames & Hudson, 2009)
Keep Reading
- The Serapeum of Saqqara: What Were the Giant Boxes For?
- Egypt Before the Pharaohs: Predynastic Egypt and the Kingdom of the Gods
- How Old Is Ancient Egypt? Rethinking the History of Egypt
- Ancient Egyptian Religion: Gods, Afterlife and a Hidden Unity
The Osireion gets a short but pointed section in Echoes of History, next to the Serapeum and the pyramids. Read them together and the pattern I am describing becomes easier to see.
Go deeper: explore our full guide in this topic hub, read a free sample, or get the complete argument in Echoes of History.