The Osireion is a symbolic tomb for Osiris
On the publication of her book ' the Osireon at Abydos' in 1904, Margaret Murray wrote : 'Through out this excavation it was always the unexpected that happened, we expected to find a passage, we found chambers and halls, we expected to find it roofed in, the roof had been completely quarried away, we expected to find a tomb, we found a place of worship.'
For days I had carried candles and matches in in my pocket ready to enter the passage as soon as there was a hole big enough to squeeze through ; but they were never required.
Flinders Petrie, (1853 – 1942) was an English Egyptologist and was a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and preservation of artefacts, he held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom at the University College London with the support of Ameliia Edwards who had created the Egypt Exploration Fund to help with the preservation of Egyptian temples and tombs, One of his trainees, Howard Carter, went on to discover the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.
Hilda Mary Isabel Petrie (1871 - 1957) was recommended to Flinders Petrie because of her drawing skills to illustrate his next book. From there, love blossomed as he had found someone to share his love of Egyptology and after their marriage they set off for Egypt.
Margaret Alice Murray ( 1863 – 1963) began her studies of Egyptology at the UCL in 1894 and developed a friendship built on respect with the department head, Flinders Petrie, who encouraged her early academic publications and appointed her as Junior Professor in 1898. In 1902–03 together with the assistance of Flinders Petrie's wife Hilda who was also an Egyptologist they commenced their excavations at the temple of Seti 1 in Abydos, which in ancient times had been a major cult center of the God Osiris, and was considered to be the place where the head of Osiris was buried.
When the God Ra left the world to rule the heavens, he appointed Osiris to rule the world of men. Osiris was murdered by his brother Set who was jealous of him. Set dismembered the body of Osiris and scattered his remains. His grieving wife Isis searched all over Egypt for many years for his body parts, once she had found them all, she then reassembled them and with her magic she brought Osiris back to life. Ra decided that Osiris could no longer live amongst men and so made Osiris the lord and Judge of the dead in the Under world.
During their excavations they had found a tremenos wall which showed a connection between the Temple of Seti and the royal tombs of the earlier kings buried in the desert behind it, there appeared a slight long hollow on the surface beneath the wall, so Petrie instructed the workers to dig deeper, a third time they were told to go down, and soon after they struck some enormous blocks of stone. The final result was that we found the pavement of the hall was forty-one feet under the surface,' and buried under the sands of time where most of the roof had collapsed or was missing, they began to realize that they had discovered an enigmatic underground chamber connected to the River Nile created with enormous blocks of granite, it had a 93-meter western tunnel with adjoined Hall and a Chamber as well as the beginning of a sloping passage, which connected it to the Temple of Seti I. The Osireion was built by Seti I, whose temple lies above ground, and it was Seti's grandson, Merenptah, who was responsible for its decorative theme.
Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray realized that the plan of the Osireion resembles the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, which is why Margaret expressed her confusion about what they expected to find, the original entrance is through a long sloping corridor that passes through two small chambers and a sharp right-angled turn, which eventually brings you to the main pillared hall. In the Osireion there is also a moat around it's outer edges which used the natural level of water to ensure the moat was filled, to symbolically create the primeval waters of nun, from which an island arose.
'Our first deep pit brought us into the South Chamber, which gave us the cartouche of Merenptah, and made us realize that we had found a building which has no known counterpart in Egypt. Then came the discovery of the Great Hall and then of the sloping passage.'
The Great Hall, the floor of which was more than forty feet below the surface of the desert, was fifteen feet wide, thirty-four feet long, and seventeen feet high. There were three doorway's, one to the south, leading to the South Chamber ; one to the east, to the sloping passage ; one to the north, to the north passage.
The Boat of Ra can be seen on the wall in the great hall, the ancient Egyptians believed that as the River Nile flowed through Egypt and formed the great highway, so a celestial river flowed through the sky and the Duat, the Kingdom of the Dead which is a dark and damp place, intoxicated by the primeval waters of the god Nun that flows through the underworld. Nun is to be understood as both a god and the attribute of the underworld. and on this river sailed the great boat in which the sun made his daily journey from east to west, and at night followed the course of the river through the Duat.
With regards to The Shrine of the South and the shrine of the North, Margaret suggests that it is probable that one is the shrine of Oriris being the the living King in the north, the other shrine is for Osiris the dead king in the south.
The shrines show relief's of The Sektet Boat and the Atet Boat. These are the two boats of the Sun ; in one he made his daily voyage across the sky from east to west, in the other he travelled through the Duat, or other world, during the night.
The sloping passage leading from the hall towards the Temple of Seti is inscribed on both sides of the passage with chapters from the Book of the Dead, which is a collection of spells which enable the soul of the deceased to navigate the afterlife. This title was given to the text by Western scholars, the Ancient Egyptian title would translate as The Book of Coming Forth by Day or Spells for Going Forth by Day. They gave the soul the knowledge of what to expect in their journey through the afterlife, it gave instructions on how to overcome the dangers of the afterlife by enabling them to assume the form of several mythical creatures and to give them the passwords necessary for admittance to certain stages of the underworld.
There is an astronomical ceiling in the burial chamber which shows the daily and annual celestial motions and also gives specific details of the heliacal rising and disappearance dates for some of the most highly revered stars. It also gives instructions on how to make a sundial.
For over a hundred years since the discovery of the Osireion by Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray it has only possible to descend down a wooden staircase, where you reach a dark green-coloured water at the bottom which is a result of the rising water table level, and you could only enter into the Osireion with a special permit for a few weeks of the year when the water level was low enough to make it safe.
I have observed that the Osireion attracts spiritual tours because of the flower of life symbols on one of the Granite slabs, I personally do not believe that the flower of life symbol was on this granite slab when the Osireion was discovered by Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray, because they were systematical and methodical in everything they observed, they even copied the Hieratic, Demonic, and Greek Graffitti, so I am sure that they would have noted the Flower of Life Symbol if they had seen it on the granite slab.
The Flower Of Life symbol is a geometric symbol of sacred geometry that expands to quantum physics, and is applied in energy healing, meditation, and mysticism. It is believed that within this symbol, holds the most meaningful and sacred patterns of our universe as a whole. It connects us to all living things. This ancient symbol demonstrates that all consciousness arises from one source, the first circle. The two symbols were painted onto the Granite with red ochre paint.
On the 5th January 2015 Archeologists uncovered a tomb on the hillside of Sheik Abd el Quarna, which is on the West Bank of Luxor, opposite the Rammessium, (the mortuary temple of Ramses the Great), their discovery is modeled on the Tomb of Osiris at Abydos
If you would like to read Margaret Murrays book ' The Osireion at Abydos', you can find it on
https://archive.org/details/osireionatabydos00murr/page/n3/mode/2up
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