AN Ancient Egyptian official designed his tomb in Western Thebes to be a magical replica of the legendary Tomb of Osiris where Isis raised Osiris from the dead, according to archaeologists.
The long-forgotten tomb, discovered in 1887 but only recently documented and published by a team of Spanish and Italian experts, is unique in the Luxor/Thebes area for its remarkable design and a built-in statue of Osiris (visible a in niche on the far wall of the tomb in the photo above).
It is located in the village of Sheikh al-Qurna ... site of many tombs of high-ranking officials and even one famous cache of royal mummies ... is radically different from most ordinary tombs.
Most tombs in that area consist of a simple, long corridor with one or two chambers for funerary texts and a shaft down to a pit just large enough to accommodate a sarcophagus.
Even the fabled Tomb of King Tutankhamun followed this basic design: long corridor, a couple of chambers and a sealed-off sarcophagus chamber.
But this extraordinary tomb has multiple levels and shafts and the layout conjures up visions of the resurrection deity Osiris.
It is only the second such Osiris-design religious site known to exist in Egypt.
It reminds archaeologists of the mysterious OSIREION in Abydos, not far from the city of ANTINOOPOLIS.
The Abydos Osireion is thought to have been the symbolic resting place for the god Osiris and is known to have attracted multitudes of pilgrims in ancient times.
This Theban tomb is centered around a statue of the god of the afterlife, Osiris.
The emerald skinned deity is sitting in a central vaulted chapel facing a staircase with a 29.5-foot shaft in it.
The shaft (in the center of the diagram) connects to another chamber with a second shaft that goes down for 19.6 into two more chambers.
The funerary chamber with the reliefs of demons holding knives is located west of the central chapel (on the left in the graphic rendering).
