The House of Osiris
Some of the largest and best known pyramids from the ancient world have been shown recently to share a common association with underground chambers and water sources.
This combination of themes simultaneously evokes memories of both the 'primal mound' and the underworld, representing the cycles of life and death in the same structures. It is proposed that these similar features between otherwise unconnected pyramids represent the fusion of a set of ancient ideas with newer ones in which the pyramid (primal-mound) becomes a representation of the unification of the underworld (afterlife), cosmology, and the living earth-mother. It is a curious fact that some of the earliest written descriptions of the Great Pyramid make mention of water in or under it.
Quote from Herodotus: (Histories 2.124) "For the underground chambers on the heights upon which the pyramids stand, which he (Cheops) caused to made as sepulchral chambers for himself an island, having conducted a channel from the Nile"
Such a sarcophagus has in fact been discovered at Giza, although not underneath the Great Pyramid but rather 90ft beneath the causeway that leads to the central pyramid of Khafre. There seems little doubt, however, that at the time of Herodotus it was known that there were both underground chambers and water beneath the Giza plateau. Giza was once known as 'The House of Osiris', the god of the afterlife and the underworld and the dead. In southern Egypt, Osiris' home was the underground chamber called the 'Osirion' at Abydoss. This is identical in design to the Valley temple at Giza which is still connected to the Nile. As a result the underground chamber contains an island permanently surrounded by water. The theme of a watery underground grotto or 'womb of the earth' is to be found around the ancient world. Perhaps the tradition of Giza as being an entrance to the underworld will one day be shown to have more substance than we currently credit it with. It is now recognized that the whole Giza plateau is undercut by a network of natural cavities in the limestone.
The fact that these cavities were covered over with the limestone paving before the pyramid was built demonstrates that the builders were aware of the porous nature of the rock.
Kemo D. 7