The discovery of wooden staffs and clay trays near the sarcophagus of King Tut might be the oldest known evidence of a ritual known as the Awakening of Osiris.
As its name suggests, this ritual is based on the death and resurrection of Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld.
It is also possible that the staffs and vessels were used for a different ritual, in which torch-bearers guided the pharaoh to the afterlife.
In 1922, when Howard Carter ventured to the Valley of the Kings and broke the seal of a tomb that had been buried in the sands of Egypt for over 2,300 years, he was taken aback by the gilded splendor that had managed to elude tomb robbers for so long. He also opened a literal door to more mysteries than he could have ever imagined.
Tutankhamun—more commonly known today as King Tut—ascended the throne at nine years old, ruled until his death (the cause of which is still being debated) at eighteen, and was the last pharaoh of the New Kingdom’s illustrious 18th dynasty. Decades later, the wealth of grave goods that were supposed to accompany him to the afterlife continue to reveal his secrets. While the crudely shaped clay trays and wooden staffs found among his trove of riches may not be made of gold, Egyptologist Nicholas Brown of Yale University now thinks they are possible evidence of a ritual that may have started with the Boy King.
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“Originally, these clay troughs were believed to be stands for the emblems found nearby and in close association to them,” Brown said in a study recently published in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. “However, closer examination of the religious and archaeological context of the artifacts enables another interpretation of their function.”
After the death of his father Akhenaten—thought by many to be a heretic because of his abandonment of the Egyptian pantheon for the worship of the sun disk, or Aten—Tutankhamun and his advisers worked to restore traditional Egyptian religion as fast as possible. The pharaoh even changed his name (he was actually born Tutankhaten). With the religious shift came an opportunity to create new rituals and revive ones that were already ancient at the time.
The trays and staffs are thought to have been used for a funerary rite known as the Awakening of Osiris. Ancient Egyptians believed that) Osiris was once a living king whose jealous brother Set murdered him, dismembered him, and scattered the parts of his body throughout Egypt. With the help of Set’s wife Nepthys, Osiris’s wife Isis reassembled her husband’s body and breathed life into it long enough for them to conceive their son, Horus. Osiris was then mummified by the jackal-headed god Anubis and went to rule the underworld. The resurrected king of the dead was thought to give life to everything from below, especially through the yearly flooding of the Nile.
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Later artwork in other tombs reveals that the ritual inspired by this myth involves commanding the dead to wake with staffs behind their heads. However, the staffs at the head of Tutankhamen’s mummy—along with trays that are thought to have held libations to once again imbue him with life—are thought to be the oldest evidence of the Awakening of Osiris being performed. The staffs and trays were also placed on reed mats because the ground was seen as impure. Mud from the Nile was apparently used to make the vessels, which may have held water from the river, whose fertility is symbolized by Osiris.
There might be an alternative explanation, however. Brown acknowledges fellow Egyptologist Jacobus van Dijk’s theory that the ritual carried out could have been the “spell of the four torches” from the infamous Book of the Dead. During this ritual, four guides (each bearing a torch) stand by the sarcophagus to accompany the pharaoh through the treacherous journey to the afterlife until he reached Osiris and the Hall of Final Judgement. They would then extinguish those torches in clay trays filled with milk from a white cow—possibly symbolizing the goddess Hathor, who is often seen in the form of a cow.
Which ritual these artifacts were actually used for remains unknown. Both would have been a part of the pharaoh’s resurrection into a deity in the afterlife, so long as he passed the test of weighing his heart and wasn’t thrown to the jaws of a ravenous beast. He could kick back and luxuriate in eternal life after that.
Lettermark
Elizabeth Rayne is a creature who writes. Her work has appeared in Ars Technica, SYFY WIRE, Space.com, Live Science, Den of Geek, Forbidden Futures and Collective Tales. She lurks right outside New York City with her parrot, Lestat. When not writing, she can be found drawing, playing the piano or shapeshifting.