There is a profound difference between visiting Egypt and being allowed to linger. On a private journey through Egypt in November 2024, I led a small group to Abydos for rare, uninterrupted time inside the Osirion, a place that, even now, only a few experience without crowds or constraint. Walking the same corridor once used by ancient priests, in silence and full daylight, shifted our sense of scale, time, and attention. So much is written about Egypt’s well-known sites, yet very little has been written about the Osirion, largely because until recently it has remained off-limits.
As leader of the group, when we arrived, my attention was outward, ensuring that everyone else experienced what they had come for. Only afterwards did I realise that I never quite surrendered myself to the Osirion in the way I had imagined for so many years.
My nine-year-old grandson did.
Without context or explanation, he was the first of our group to enter via the old entrance used in ancient times, and he felt the Osirion immediately. I suppose I should not have been surprised when, at one point, I found him sitting quietly alone in a secluded corner, contemplating the emerald-green water (not algae). A year later, it remains one of his strongest memories of our time together. Sometimes places speak more clearly when we arrive without expectation and are open to feeling instead of analysis.
I think I had also been too excited by the thought of the visit, wanting to explore every corner, to extract meaning, to make the most of our time. But afterwards I became consciously aware that the entire time I was down in the Osirion I was subconsciously aware of the courage it would have taken to be entombed alone in the darkness of the sarcophagus chamber for three days and three nights. Thinking about it in daylight gives no sense of the fears that would come alive in the dark, when the space around you fills with unseen vibrations.
Osiris, Abydos, and the Meaning of Descent
The Osirion is inseparable from the Osiris myth, not as abstract theology, but as lived ritual. Abydos was believed to be the resting place of Osiris’s head, making it the spiritual heart of resurrection belief in ancient Egypt. The Osirion functioned as his symbolic tomb, where rites reenacted death, restoration, and rebirth.
Descent is central here. You move down into the Osirion because it sits below ground level, and I wonder what it would have been like in ancient times when the roof was intact. Was there once another floor at ground level? Was the structure deliberately sealed and hidden beneath the earth in ancient days?
I have written more fully in a previous post about the Osirion’s construction, how it is set down behind the Temple of Seti I, the meeting of excavated sandstone and immense granite blocks, and the sense that it was conceived as a single, deliberate work rather than added later — in the section “The Osirion: A Hidden Library in Stone.”
Engineering That Refuses Easy Timelines
Carved deep into the bedrock, the Osirion combines excavated sandstone with enormous red granite blocks quarried at Aswan, over a thousand kilometers away. These stones are fitted with extraordinary precision, including complex multi-angled joints rarely seen elsewhere in Egypt apart from at the Valley Temple at the Sphinx in Giza.
Although officially attributed to Seti I, the Osirion aligns precisely with his temple above, implying advanced foreknowledge of the subsurface geology before excavation began. Whether Seti I built it, restored it, or incorporated something far older remains unresolved. What is clear is that the Osirion does not behave like a conventional New Kingdom monument.
The Water Problem We Do Not Yet Understand
One of the Osirion’s most striking features is the water that permanently fills it, and refuses to be removed. Despite repeated pumping attempts, the water always returns as fast as it is pumped out but never rises beyond the same fixed level.
Scientific testing shows that it is not ordinary Nile water but a complex mixture that includes ancient Nile water from before the building of the Aswan High Dam and much older groundwater rising under pressure from deep below. It emerges from within the structure itself, through channels that are still not fully understood.
Personally, I believe this is not a problem to be solved but a design to be understood. Until we know why the Osirion was meant to hold water, we should stop trying to remove it. How can we know that damage done here could ever be undone? For me, the first rule should be simple: do no harm.
A Place That Waits
The Osirion does not reveal itself all at once. It works slowly. Quietly. On its own terms. Some places do not want to be explained. They want to be experienced and remembered. And if Abydos calls to you, it is worth listening.
With my way now open to securing exclusive private access to sites like the Osirion, so long closed to the public, my focus for 2026 is on opening these extraordinary places for those who are curious, inquisitive, and searching for something beyond the norm.
Last updated on 20/12/2025 by Marie Vaughan