Osiris: the Egyptian god of the dead, his myth and his temples

Who was Osiris?

Osiris was the god who died and lived again, and so offered Egyptians the hope of life after death. He first appears clearly in the Pyramid Texts carved inside the pyramid of King Unas at Saqqara around 2350 BC, where the dead king becomes Osiris. Over the following centuries that privilege spread to officials and eventually to anyone who could afford the right spells and burial – a change once called the “democratisation of the afterlife”, a label many Egyptologists now think oversimplifies a gradual process.

He was also a god of fertility and the Nile. Sprouting grain was his body returning to life, which is why his skin is painted green, for vegetation, or black, for the rich silt left by the flood, rather than a human colour. His origins are obscure: older books suggested he was a deified early king, but there is no evidence for this, and most scholars see him as a god from the start.

How to recognise Osiris

Look for a figure wrapped like a mummy, arms crossed holding a crook and flail, wearing the tall white atef crown flanked by two ostrich feathers. He is often enthroned in a shrine, with Isis and Nephthys standing behind him. The crook and flail – a shepherd’s staff and what may be a fly whisk or herdsman’s whip – were royal insignia, marking him as the eternal king.

His symbol is the djed pillar, said to be his backbone and a sign of stability; you will see it carved in rows on temple walls and as amulets. Pharaohs were often carved in “Osiride” form, as mummiform figures with crossed arms, as on the pillars inside Abu Simbel and along the upper terrace of Hatshepsut’s temple. Families also made “Osiris beds” and grain-filled figures that sprouted green, a living picture of his resurrection.

The myth of Osiris, Isis and Seth

The core story never changes: Osiris, the good king of Egypt, is killed by his brother Seth; Isis restores his body and conceives their son Horus; and Osiris becomes ruler of the dead. The details, though, vary greatly between sources.

Egyptian texts mostly allude to the murder rather than narrate it, perhaps because writing it down was thought dangerous. The Pyramid Texts say Osiris was struck down at a place called Nedyet; other sources mention drowning in the Nile. The famous fuller version comes from the Greek writer Plutarch around AD 100. Seth tricks Osiris into lying in a made-to-measure chest at a banquet, seals it and throws it into the river; it drifts to Byblos in Lebanon, where Isis recovers it. Seth then cuts the body into fourteen pieces and scatters them across Egypt, and Isis, helped by her sister Nephthys, finds every one except the phallus, eaten by a fish.

Plutarch was well informed, but he was writing for Greek readers, and Egyptian temple lists of Osiris relics give other numbers, including sixteen and forty-two, the number of Egypt’s provinces. Many towns claimed to hold a piece of the god. In every version Anubis embalms the body, making Osiris the first mummy, and Horus later avenges his father, a contest told in our Horus guide.

Osiris and the judgement of the dead

In the Hall of the Two Truths, the dead person’s heart was weighed against the feather of Ma’at while Osiris presided as judge. In this scene from spell 125 of the Book of the Dead, Anubis tends the scales, Thoth records the result and the monster Ammit – part crocodile, part lion, part hippo – waits to devour a heart weighed down by wrongdoing. The deceased also recited a “negative confession”, denying 42 sins before 42 judges.

A soul that passed became “an Osiris”: the dead were literally called Osiris followed by their own name, and could hope to live on in the Field of Reeds, an idealised Egypt of endless harvests. More in our guide to the ancient Egyptian afterlife.

Abydos and the other cult centres

Abydos, about 170 km north of Luxor by road, was believed to be Osiris’s burial place and was Egypt’s holiest pilgrimage site for some two thousand years. By the Middle Kingdom, priests had identified the tomb of the First Dynasty king Djer at Umm el-Qa’ab, in the desert behind the town, as the grave of Osiris. An annual festival re-enacted his death and resurrection, with his statue carried in procession from the temple to the tomb and back. Thousands of Egyptians set up memorial stelae and small chapels along the route so they could share in the festival for eternity.

The other major centre was Busiris (ancient Djedu) in the Nile Delta, home of the djed pillar. In Ptolemaic times, the island of Biga beside Philae held the Abaton, a sacred grove and tomb of Osiris where silence was enforced and only priests could set foot; Isis visited it every ten days to make offerings.

Where to see Osiris in Egypt today

Go to Abydos: Seti I’s temple there, begun around 1290 BC and finished by Ramesses II, has some of the finest painted reliefs in Egypt and seven sanctuaries, one of them for Osiris. Behind it lies the Osireion, a mysterious underground cenotaph designed as an island tomb for the god, often partly flooded with groundwater. In a corridor nearby is the Abydos King List, 76 cartouches of Seti’s royal predecessors. Abydos is about three hours’ drive from Luxor and is best combined with Dendera in one long day.

• Dendera: rooftop chapels carved with the rites of the month of Khoiak, when priests shaped Osiris figures from earth and grain to celebrate his rebirth.
• Philae: Hadrian’s Gate faces Biga island and carries a relief of the Nile’s source in a cave guarded by a serpent; an Osiris chapel on the Isis temple roof is not always open.
• Luxor’s West Bank: Osiride statues of Hatshepsut line her temple’s upper terrace, and almost every tomb shows Osiris enthroned as judge.