What is the djed pillar?

Stability and endurance. In the story of Osiris it is the god’s backbone, and raising the Djed was a festival of his return.

What the sign shows: A pillar with four crossbars. What it first pictured is still debated: a bundle of reeds, a tree trunk, a backbone.
How Gerald Massey read it in 1907: Massey calls it the Tat and reads it as the fixed support of the world, set up by Ptah, and as a sign of what does not pass away.
Where you see it today: On amulets in nearly every Egyptian collection. The raising of the Djed is carved in the temple of Seti I at Abydos.
Where it stands in Massey’s book: Massey names it 74 times across the book. Book XII, p. 750: “The pillar that holds up heaven”; Book XII, p. 740: “Raising the Djed pillar”; Book IV, p. 189: “The pillar and the little sun”.
Signs that look like it: Was sceptre, Papyrus and Knot of Isis. The app’s Symbol Trainer sets them side by side, so the eye learns to tell them apart.
In Massey’s words: “The Tat-cross is a type of the eternal in Tattu.” (Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (1907), Book XII, p. 749)
In the app: Trainer › Symbol Trainer › Djed pillar. The app’s Symbol Trainer reads 42 signs this way, each with Massey’s own words and the page they stand on.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

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