THE BODY OF OSIRIS
The early, giant pyramids of ancient Egypt at Abu Roash, Saqqara, Dahshur, Meidum, and Giza are, without doubt, the most enigmatic and enduring man-made structures ever built. As stated throughout this book, we are told by conventional thought that these pyramids were built by a succession of Third and Fourth Dynasty kings to serve as their eternal tomb and instrument of revivication. We are further told that there was no grand plan involved in setting down any of these pyramids, that each of the kings in whose names these structures were supposedly constructed cared little for what pyramids went before or may have come after their own. Each ancient Egyptian king is believed to have built his pyramid to his own personal taste and without knowledge of or reference to any master plan. Egyptian kings, it is said, did not plan or build tombs for their successor or their successor’s successor.
However, in the ancient Egyptians’ earliest religious writings, the Pyramid Texts, we are told that the “pyramid is Osiris” and “this construction is Osiris.” In Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris we are further told that the body of Osiris had been cut into sixteen (or fourteen) pieces. As I stated in chapter 2, it is not unreasonable to propose that these sixteen dismembered parts of Osiris were in fact an allegorical reference to the first sixteen pyramids completed by the ancient Egyptians and that, in time, these sixteen pyramids became the metaphorical body of Osiris, just like Christian churches today are referred to as the body of Christ. These sixteen pyramid arks, packed full with all manner of recovery items, were the proactive and preemptive means by which the ancient Egyptians hoped the Earth (their kingdom) could be revived and recreated after its “death.”
As arks the pyramids would have contained, among many other things, vast quantities of various seed types such as wheat, barley, grape, and others—the sixteen-piece pyramid body of Osiris packed with seeds. And we note, also as mentioned in chapter 2, that in later dynasties the ancient Egyptians would fashion small effigies of Osiris from mud. These were known as corn mummies because the ancient Egyptians would then pack this miniature body of Osiris with various seeds. This ritual was part of the Osiris rebirth Festival of Khoiak.
Associated with these corn mummies was the Osiris brick or Osiris bed. These were small hollowed-out wooden boxes or stone-fired containers that resembled a minisarcophagus, or nebankh. Within these small containers the ancient Egyptians would place some earth, sprinkle it with seed in the shape of Osiris, and then bury it in the ground under a large boulder, thereby symbolizing the original nebankh (Osiris bed) that had been placed within the pyramid to hold the life force, or ka, of Osiris within the pyramid body of Osiris.
The growing seed within the Osiris beds symbolized the rebirth of the kingdom (the Earth) through the agency and regenerative power of Osiris. This particular ritual at the Festival of Khoiak was likely in remembrance of the original Osiris bed.
When the Italian pyramid explorer Giovanni Belzoni first entered the second pyramid at Giza (G2) in 1818, he found earth and bones within a granite container, a discovery that Belzoni initially believed to have been human remains, possibly belonging to Khafre. But when these bones were sent to the naturalist William Clift at the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum in London, it was discovered that these remains were not human at all but were in fact the bones of a bull—the ba of Osiris. In Egyptian hieroglyphs the bull is associated with the soul, thus these stone containers symbolically held the soul of Osiris within the pyramid body of Osiris.
Conventional Egyptology writes off the discovery of earth and bull bones in the so-called sarcophagus of G2 as an intrusive burial or as an offering to the gods. In the words of Belzoni:
A young man of the name of Pieri, employed in the counting house of Briggs and Walmas in Cairo, came the next day to visit the pyramid, and, having rummaged the rubbish inside of the sarcophagus, found a piece of bone, which we supposed to belong to a human skeleton. On searching farther, we found several pieces, which, having been sent to London, proved to be the bones of a bull.
Some consequential persons, however, who would not scruple to sacrifice a point in history, rather than lose a bon mot, thought themselves mighty clever in baptizing the said bones those of a cow, merely to raise a joke. So much for their taste for antiquity.2
But not everyone of Belzoni’s time shared his view, as this 1822 extract from The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle shows.
Signior Belzoni has returned to England, and has published his Travels, operations, and astonishing discoveries in Egypt and Nubia. Mr. Faber expressed a decided opinion that the sarcophagi of the pyramids were intended solely to deposit the remains of the sacred bull, contrary to the testimonies of Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and other ancient historians. The bones of a bull have indeed been found by Belzoni in the pyramid of Cepherenes, and in the great tomb of the valley Beban el Malook; yet this enterprising and indefatigable traveler takes the liberty of differing from the opinion of the Rev. Mr. Faber, and declares his conviction that these stupendous structures “were erected as Sepulchers,” and that the Pyramid in question undoubtedly contained the remains of “some great personage. . . .” But why should Mr. Faber so sarcastically express his surprise . . . why feel himself provoked at this discovery of the bull’s bones, unaccompanied by those of the sovereign? The event proves, that the religion, or rather their infatuating idolatry, was more potent than their preservation of its object. Diodorus has told us . . . that Cepherenes, by his conduct, had rendered himself odious to the people, and that they threatened to disturb his remains. They are not found in the pyramid!! As to the sepulchral honors conferred on the sacred bull, the same historian, Diodorus . . . after describing the religious ceremonies in their worship of Isis and Osiris, noticing the traditionary mandates of the former to the priests of Egypt with regard to the adoration of Osiris, writes as follows. . . .
“To honor Osiris as a god, to consecrate whatever animal they may choose, bred in the country—to worship it while alive in like manner as they formerly did Osiris, and after its death to confer similar funeral honors.”
Thus the rolls of antiquity announce the most solemn, splendid burial of the bull or Apis, and the cow or Isis; and after the lapse of thousands of years, the tombs which at the time of this worship were carefully concealed from the public eye, are penetrated at length by the travelers of the present day; the sacred relics, which they have just discovered, are accordingly found to be accompanied with all the pomp imaginable and are ocular and additional evidence of historic veracity. That the pyramids may also have been originally intended to commemorate the Flood, appears extremely probable: it is an opinion long ago entertained, and lately supported by Mr. Faber, with acknowledged erudition. But this did not preclude the occasional appropriation of these structures as tombs for their Kings.3
Egyptology essentially concurs with Belzoni’s view that these bull bones represent a much later, intrusive burial (perhaps relating to some ritual after the king’s body had been removed) and does not actually consider the possibility that Belzoni’s discovery of earth and bull bones within the granite container of G2 might actually have been its original content, that these containers of earth and bull bones symbolically represented the soul of Osiris (within the pyramid body of Osiris). As Lehner states, “Curiously, bones found in the sarcophagus turned out to be those of a bull. In a much later period bulls were buried as symbols of the pharaoh himself or of Osiris. Rainer Stadelmann has suggested that these bones were probably an offering thrown into the sarcophagus at some unknown later date by intruders, long after the king’s body had been robbed and lost.”4
Given the clear tradition in ancient Egypt of intrusive burials, we have to ask why it would make more sense to give over a supposedly empty sarcophagus for the “burial” of earth and the bones of a bull? And why, we might ask, wasn’t a surrogate ka statue of the original missing king placed inside the empty sarcophagus, thereby ensuring his continued place in the afterlife? And
furthermore, if it had been discovered that the ancient remains of Khafre had been robbed, then this would have provided the reigning king or pharaoh the perfect opportunity to appropriate Khafre’s pyramid for his own intrusive, royal burial. But no—we are to believe that the reigning king turned down such a golden opportunity to safeguard his afterlife and glorify himself for all eternity, and instead went to the not inconsiderable trouble of filling the granite box in Khafre’s pyramid with nothing but earth and the bones of a bull. Something here simply doesn’t add up.
Clearly, the tracking down and dating of these bones might help provide a more definitive answer as to their provenance and purpose. To this end I contacted the acting curator of the Royal College of Surgeons in London to ask what had become of Belzoni’s bull bones. Alas, it seems that the bull bones from this stone container have become lost, as explained to me in a private e-mail.
William Clift was the first curator of the museum upon its opening in 1813 and acquired a large amount of material which was added to the collections. Unfortunately, the college was badly bombed during World War Two and we lost over two thirds of our collections. I’m sorry to say it appears as though this specimen may have been one of the destroyed items as we now have no record of its whereabouts. There is a chance that it may have been one of the rare survivors that was de-accessioned due to the destruction of the college building and transferred across to the Natural History Museum.5
Having subsequently contacted the Natural History Museum in London, I was somewhat disappointed to learn that they did not have this specimen in their collection either, so, it would seem, that Belzoni’s bull bones may be lost forever.
But the fact of the matter remains that this curious discovery within the stone container of G2 should not at all be considered peculiar, and, as explained above, it is perfectly explainable within the cultural ideas and religious practices of the ancient Egyptians; there is a cultural context for an earth-filled stone container to have been placed within the early, giant pyramids. With this earth-filled container in the pyramid of Khafre we have a direct link between this original container and the later practice of burying small, replica containers (Osiris bricks) filled with earth under a “mound of creation” (generally a large boulder). It was a chthonic ritual celebrating the pyramids as the revivication instruments of the Earth, laid out along the banks of the Nile in the form of Osiris, a stone container to hold the ka and ba (i.e., the soul of Osiris) within the sixteen-part pyramid body of Osiris.
A small number of Osiris beds have been found in Egyptian tombs, most notably that of Tutankhamun. These artifacts symbolized the chthonic reemergence of life, and it is possible that their use goes far back into antiquity, possibly even before the pyramid-building age.
Of Osiris bricks and Osiris beds, Egyptologist Angela Tooley writes:
Osiris Bricks. . . . These are related to the Festival of Khoiak when images of Osiris were made of soil and grain. The containers are defined as matrices for the creation of such Osiris figures. . . .
Osiris bricks are little known. They appear most frequently in exhibition catalogues, with little discussion. Typically they are of fired red pottery, are rectangular in shape and resemble ordinary bricks, on average 24cm long, 12cm wide and 6cm deep. Although they are remarkably consistent in shape and dimensions, all the bricks are individual and handmade. Roughly half of the known bricks have a shallow rebate in the upper face, probably to accommodate a lid, while the remaining examples are flat-topped.
Recessed centrally or off-center into the upper face of each brick is an image of Osiris between 18 and 25 cm long and 2 to 4 cm in depth. He is shown in profile, wearing the atef-crown and long ceremonial beard, and carrying a crook and flail. . . .
Charles Lortet worked in the Wadi Qubbanet el Qi-rud in 1905, finding not only corn-mummies but also other types of Osiris figures. In 1916 Howard Carter rediscovered the wadi, noting that the wadi mouth contained “mimic” burials comprising mummiform figures in faience, wood and stone in pottery coffins, as well as many corn-mummies placed below large boulders.6
What we actually have here then is a cultural explanation for the earth and bull bones found in the stone container within G2—the nebankh or “possessor of life,” the stone container that possessed the invisible life force or “vital spark” of the ka. Conversely, we are also presented with a cultural explanation for the mummyless stone containers found in the pyramids and the reason why, as mentioned in chapter 3, not a single one of these containers in any of these pyramids (unlike mastaba sarcophagi of this period) was ever inscribed with any names or titles of any ancient Egyptian king when, in terms of the religious beliefs of the time, such might have been expected.
In short, the stone containers found within the early, giant pyramids may not have been sarcophagi for a dead king at all but rather might have served as an integral part of a deep, chthonic ritual relating to the revivication of the Earth through the agency of Osiris. They might be a link to a stone container filled with earth that symbolized the life force or ka of Osiris, an earth-filled stone container that was actually found by Belzoni in G2 (the archetype of the Osiris brick and Osiris bed), and the nebankh that would appear in smaller, symbolic forms in later times during the festival celebrating the rebirth of Osiris.
For conventional Egyptology to continue to insist that the earth and bull bones discovered by Belzoni in the stone container of G2 were nothing more than a later intrusive burial serves only to misinform and mislead; it’s a ploy designed solely to prop up and perpetuate a flawed paradigm (i.e., the pyramid tomb theory). This crucial piece of evidence and the misguided interpretation Egyptology has applied to it represents perhaps one of the pivotal moments where conventional Egyptology may have taken a fundamental wrong turn in formulating its ideas about the function of the first pyramids. Ever since Belzoni’s erroneous assumption, his complete failure to recognize that there was another cultural narrative to explain the earth-filled stone container he had found, every Egyptologist who followed in his wake has been hammering the same square peg into the same round hole.
In failing to make this simple connection between the earth in the nebankh of Khafre’s Pyramid and the earth in the later Osiris bricks and corn mummies (i.e., miniature nebankhs or “containers of life”), this would become the first of many wrong turns Egyptologists would make with regard to the understanding of the early, giant pyramids and why they struggle—even to this day—to reconcile their pyramid tomb theory and its missing mummies with the actual evidence. In short, regarding the discovery by Belzoni in the sarcophagus of G2, Egyptologists have had to concoct a truly bizarre scenario in order to explain this contradictory evidence and to shoehorn the pyramid tomb theory into their preconceived notions. But, as repeatedly stated, there is every possibility that the material found in 1818 by Belzoni in the stone container of G2 actually represented its original contents and that these granite boxes in these first pyramids may in fact have been the archetype of the later tradition of the Osiris bricks and beds and the corn mummies. And if this is so—and there is little reason to doubt it—then it places a monumental question mark over the veracity and legitimacy of the preferred tomb theory that Egyptology has been advocating for the best part of two hundred years.
RAISING THE DJED PILLAR
The Osirian Festival of Khoiak would culminate with a ceremony known as raising the djed pillar. The djed pillar (figure 9.1) was also closely associated with the god Osiris and is generally regarded as symbolizing his backbone. Thus the raising of the djed pillar is essentially raising Osiris, who is set on his side (i.e., dead) so that when the pillar is raised, he becomes upright (i.e., revived). Other interpretations of this ceremony assert that the djed pillar represents the lost phallus of Osiris and that the raising of the djed pillar actually represents the phallus being made erect, thus it is a potent symbol of the regenerative power and fecundity of Osiris. As Budge wrote in The Book of the Dead, “Sailing about she gathered the frag
ments of Osiris’s body. Wherever she found one, there she built a tomb. . . . By the festival celebrated by the Egyptians in honor of the model of the lost member of Osiris, we are probably to understand the public performance of the ceremony of ‘setting up the Tet in Tattu’ [Djed Pillar], which we know took place on the last day of the month Choiak.”7
Figure 9.1. Djed pillar Image:
But the pyramid arks represented but one aspect of Project Osiris; they were the physical hardware, the practical storage facilities. For the revivication of the Earth to be “guaranteed,” then the gods would have had to be appeased just as they had to be appeased in their sun temples to ensure the sun would be reborn each and every day. And so, much like the sun temples, Project Osiris ensured that the pyramid arks would also be equipped with chthonic temples built on their eastern flanks (east being the place of rebirth), in which the priests could recite their prayers and spells that would ensure the Earth, just like the sun, could be revived and rejuvenated after its coming “death.” And it may even have been that the ancient Egyptians went so far as to depict the desired revivication of the Earth by inscribing all manner of plants, animals, and heavenly bodies—everything in creation—onto the walls of the great causeways that connected the two chthonic temples in a great burst of energy, of creation, shooting forth from the eastern face of the pyramid, everything pouring out of the pyramid in a great burst of life to revive the Earth—just as the primeval mound had done at the First Time of creation when it arose from the primordial flood waters.
In this sense it is easy to understand how the pyramids and their associated chthonic temples, having been the great body of Osiris that ensured the revivication of a dying kingdom, would have become revered by later dynasties and how the pyramid itself (and its function as a repository of seeds and other vital recovery items) would naturally have evolved into a religious icon. As such, it is easy to understand how this would—in time—have further evolved into a religion that practiced the corporeal preservation and rebirth of the king himself, with Osiris now a god and placed at the very heart of what had become a revivication ritual of the king himself. In this regard, Egyptologist John G. Griffiths writes:
The Secret Chamber of Osiris: Lost Knowledge of the Sixteen Pyramids Page 20
