Table of Contents
Ancient Architects retells a dig at Abydos that opened on the first day of 1898, when Emile Amelineau announced he had found the burial of Osiris. Egyptian archaeology was still thin, and a local Good Friday habit of taking clay from the ground already marked the place. Amelineau, trained in Coptic church history, held an exclusive permit and emptied the tomb in a rush, keeping whole objects and discarding the rest. The crew raised a black basalt image of the god under the white crown, with Isis as a kite and hawks for Horus. A skull he assigned to Osiris was later judged a woman’s, and he did not change his theory. After Gaston Maspero ended the monopoly, Flinders Petrie dug again, recovered thrown-away pieces including a jeweled arm, and read the monument as the tomb of Djer. The Osiris figure was later placed in the 13th Dynasty, when that burial had become a pilgrimage shrine. The channel’s point is dry. Amelineau found the place people called the god’s tomb. It was a king’s.
Key points
- On the first day of 1898 Amelineau announced that a tomb he was clearing at Abydos belonged to Osiris.
- The standout object was a black basalt image of the god on a lion bed, with Isis shown as a kite.
- A skull he assigned to Osiris was later identified as a woman’s, and his reading did not change.
- Petrie’s later season showed the monument was Djer’s tomb and that many objects had been thrown away.
- In the Middle Kingdom that same burial was converted into an Osiris shrine that drew pilgrims.
- The channel’s point is that the 1898 find was real as a shrine and a royal tomb, and wrong as the god’s own grave.
Short quotes
Osirus was a real living person which we now know was never the case
Ancient Architects, The Tomb of Osiris Report of 1898
The digger treated Osiris as a historical man, a reading the channel rejects. Watch at 4:11
the tomb of Jer was transformed into a ritual site and it was known as the tomb of Osiris
Ancient Architects, The Tomb of Osiris Report of 1898
Later ages, in this account, turned King Djer’s burial into a shrine under the god’s name. Watch at 6:19
Video by Ancient Architects. Watch on YouTube.