The Osireion at Abydos


Hamunaptra


"Who has cleft a channel for the flood,
Or a way for the thunderbolt. . .
To satisfy the wasted and desolate land,
And to make the seeds of grass to sprout?"
- Job 38:25,27

Abydos

From 13,000 BC to 10,000 BC Egypt was not a desert at all. It was a lush, green tropical paradise dotted with many deep surface lakes. Then around 10,000 BC the rains started to diminish to the point where after 3000 BC there was no rain at all. Egypt quickly became a desert. (1) Perhaps a civilization of sorts grew up during the rainy epoch. The sudden emergence of a strong, structured kingdom of Egypt must have had its origins somewhere. They had a fully developed philosophy already; the Pyramid Texts, which evolved into the famous Book of the Dead. Spell # 662 dates from before 3100 BC, and tells the dead "...to cast the sand from his face." This was a common allusion of that era, as you might expect. Their whole ecosystem having been blanketed with drifting sands, then destroyed altogether by the desert whirlwind, according to the Book of Job. (2)

Ancient Egypt as we now know it appeared circa 3000 BC. The first Pharaoh of any note, Khasekhemwy, created a very odd monument in 2700 BC in an area that would become known as Abydos - the sacred burial grounds of all future Kings and Queens. Pharaoh KhaseKhemwy left a fleet of 75 ft. wooden boats in the middle of what is now open desert. They lie almost 10 kilometers west of the Nile near a temple built by Seti I 1400 years later. (3) The presence of these highly engineered boats implies a technologically advanced society predating the emergence of Ancient Egypt. The monument, called the Hall of Barques, itself might be an allusion to their tropical paradise lost to the shifting desert sands, which destroyed their lakes and rendered these boats superfluous.

The Book of Job, you may recall, is the story of a noble man who loses everything to some unseen malice. His estate is ruined. His children are killed in the wreckage of their own homes. The reader is left with the impression Job's entire culture is demolished because all physical evidence of its existence is eradicated. Perhaps this is an allusion to the rapid encroachment of desert sands - the much feared whirlwinds - upon Job's land. I believe the "Land of Uz" that is Job's homeland is a reference to a "Land of Ooze," as in swampy, water rich land - as opposed to dry, caustic desert. The Book of Job would therefore be symbolic of the fate suffered by all Job's people and their land.

I believe Pharaoh Khasekhemwy was the author of the Book of Job. He wrote it to preserve the memory of the lost land; its people, and its philosophy. But who were these people? They were clearly not Hebrews; in fact, the Hebrews seemed to be their sworn enemy. The Book of Job tells how "God and Satan" combined forces against Job and his people - i.e. the Egyptians and some powerful entity; was this the beast Leviathan in the Book of Job?



The Hypogeum

Imagine for a moment that Ancient Egypt was preceded by a coherent civilization, from which it inherited a sophisticated spirituality and an advanced ship building technology. (It's a fact that peoples in the area were quite advanced, with their own language and alphabet.) This civilization would have had a lush landscape and plenty of water during the rainy epoch. A large metropolis could very likely have been built. As the rains diminished and drought set in, however, they would need to resort to other water sources. Assuming the city was distant from the Nile River, and aquifers were inaccessible, then an aqueduct would be needed to carry fresh water to the city from the Nile.

The key to a working aqueduct is accessing a quality water source. (Here's a formal paper I wrote about aqueducts built by the Romans circa 100 AD.) In the case of this inland city state, the best water would not be from the Nile itself because it floods each year and the water becomes heavily silted. An artesian well outside of the Nile's flood plain would be needed to access the aquifer and designed to avoid any silting, using the ground itself to filter the Nile's water.

The Osireion was discovered in the winter of 1901-1902. The archaeologists on the scene, Lady (Mrs.) Petrie and Margaret Murray, had the initial impression that the place was a giant waterworks or "hypogeum." It was a massive stone structure fifty feet below the surface. The famous cartographer Strabo had the same impression in the Roman Era, after which time the place was known as "Strabo's Well." In Strabo's time there was a stone stairway leading from the surface to the Osireion, which tapped an underground aquifer that was always filled with cool fresh water. (4)

The Osireion was not fully unearthed until the 1913-1914 season when Naville lead an expedition of the Egypt Exploration Society. Naville believed it to be the most ancient stone building in Egypt. Subsequent archaeologists - notably Henry Frankfort - contested this, but there is still controversy over the issue. (5)



Seti I built a temple next to the Osireion circa 1300 BC and decorated the interior of the place. Many of the wall decorations seemed almost temporary in nature, according to Henry Frankfort (Mrs. Frankfort was also a member of this expedition) in "The Cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos" (39th Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Society, 1933) p. 36:

"The state of preservation of these inscriptions is exceptionally bad. They are hastily and roughly painted on a thin lime-plaster, which has often cracked or flaked off altogether. ... We felt obliged to copy this wall completely before closing down in 1926 because the exposure after the excavation, with its change in moisture and free access of sun and wind increased the damage ... And we found, in fact, on our return in 1927 that large portions had become unreadable."

The decoration of the Osireion was not even completed by Seti I, but by King Merenptah two generations later. Even then, the above referenced inscriptions in the entrance passage were left in a rudimentary unfinished form.

Water Works

The evidence used by archaeologists to prove Seti I built the Osireion is circumstantial, even careless. The poor quality of the wall decorations is one point against - why go to so much trouble to build such a complex, massive structure 50 feet underground, 10 kilometers from the Nile - then not even bother to lavishly decorate it? That is very much out of character. Seti's cartouches are carved in three places in the Osireion. Yet, it was traditional for Pharaoh's to to claim the works of their predecessors by carving their hieroglyphs in their temples. The only other evidence is several granite cramps joining columns to lintels inscribed with Seti I's cartouche. That is not much physical evidence at all, considering the size and complexity of the structure. (6)

There are documents referencing the Osireion during Seti I's reign, notably official orders for quarry stone. However, the volume of quarry stone noted in the official reports, and the existence of only two such references in surviving documentation indicates a much smaller construction; e.g. of an ornate stairway leading down to the Osireion - not the entire Osireion. Archaeologists claim the canal was dug to transport these huge blocks of red granite from the quarries from near Aswan, 200 miles south on the Nile. Had the canal been constructed for the Temple itself, it would have been much closer. The canal doesn't even point toward the Nile (which is East in the diagram; the canal goes West). They claim the canal was dug to avoid the construction of the Temple on the surface. Yet, the pit for the Osireion would be so big that the Osireion would have to be completed, then buried, for the Temple construction to even begin.

In any event, the canal would have to be 10 kilometers long, and well over fifty feet deep because that's where the water table was - i.e. at the level of the Osireion. Creating such a canal in the middle of the desert would be virtually impossible. The canal would have to be hundreds of feet wide so the sloping sand walls would not collapse. What remains of the canal to this day is so immense that not even 2500 years of drifting desert sands have covered it up. It was easily visible to the naked eye to the first archaeologists on the site. The canal would have to be lined with stone or brick from start to finish, to remain in working order in such a desert environment. (The remnants near Seti's temple are so constructed.) A construction project of that magnitude would be survived by many more documents and far more archaeological evidence. Yet, not one such document survives. The only reasonable explanation is that the canal was not built by Seti I at all, but when the Osireion was originally constructed - long before Seti I built his Temple there at Abydos.

However, even if the place was built before Ancient Egypt even existed, the same problems would exist in its construction. For any civilization to go to so much trouble for such a relatively small Temple; it just seems unlikely. It could only be justified as an engineered structure. It's not hard to come up with such a purpose: as a hydraulic device to tap underground water. The design of the Osireion supports this conjecture.

The seventeen cells surrounding the Central Hall are filled with sand. These cells have no bottom (at least Naville excavated them down to 12 feet, and still had not reached a bottom). In fact there are no floors in any of the structure other than the Central Hall. Similar designs were later used by the Romans to tap underground sources for their aqueducts. The sand filled auxiliary chambers serve as sedimentation chambers, filtering any silt that is suspended in the water. These deposits can be cleaned out periodically to enable the system to remain operational for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The huge walls and massive ceiling serve to contain high water pressure, e.g. when the Nile is in flood stage and the water table rises high. The exit chamber is similar to modern hydraulic devices for high pressure systems, acting to isolate any large pressure variations at the source. The entire aqueduct likely acted as a siphon, and the canal was needed to prime the Osireion by way of what later became the stairway entrance. (The exit conduit is clearly visible in the illustration for "the dramatic text" page.)

The Osireion itself is oriented so the exit chamber points inland, perhaps leading in a straight line to the inland city (see the above illustration), via the canal. The canal would bring fresh water without having to go ten more kilometers to the Nile itself. This seems a much more likely explanation for the place. If that's the case, then at some point the aqueduct would have ceased to be operational. Presumably the people would have relocated to the Nile, and might then have made the Osireion into a Temple. It would be the first such Temple at Abydos, which became the sacred burial grounds for the subsequent civilization we know as Ancient Egypt. These people might also have decorated the place; perhaps that's why the writing was so delicate when Frankfort excavated the Osireion: it wasn't 3500 years old, but perhaps twice that.

The mystery is why the people would abandon such an obviously important place. They must have had quite a compelling reason for doing so. It's not known if this might have been the Hebrews, who supposedly did not even exist until around 1500 BC. However, they did have the Book of Job in their collection of tales from their nomadic wanderings, and they tell of a great conflict between themselves and Job's people.

Footnotes

1. Hancock p. 414 2. Faulkner p. 11 3. Lehner p. 77 4. Hancock p. 400 5. Hancock p. 404 6, Brand p. 174 - 178

Bibliography

Brand, Peter J. The Monuments of Seti I Brill, London

Faulkner, R.O. Book of the Dead University of Texas Press, Austin

Hancock, Graham Fingerprints of the Gods Three Rivers Press, New York

Lehner, Mark The Complete Pyramids Thames and Hudson LTD, London