Who is Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead?

Osiris (Egyptian Usir) was the god of the dead and of rebirth in ancient Egypt, and of the life that returned each year with the Nile flood and the new grain. In his myth he was a good king murdered by his brother Set. His wife Isis found his body and brought him back to life long enough to conceive their son, Horus. Osiris then became king and judge of the dead.

Who he was in Egypt: Osiris was the model of a good king and lord of the afterlife. His great cult centre was Abydos, where pilgrims came for his yearly festival. In the Book of the Dead, the dead person’s heart is weighed against the feather of Ma’at, truth and right order, in a hall where Osiris presides as judge; those found true live on. In time every dead person hoped to become “an Osiris”. His titles include Wennefer, “the perfect one”, and Foremost of the Westerners, for the dead were thought to go west with the setting sun.
His signs and colours: Osiris is shown as a mummy wrapped in white, holding the crook and flail of kingship and wearing the atef, a tall white crown with a plume on each side. His skin is often green, for new growth, or black, for the fertile Nile mud. His sign is the djed pillar, read as his backbone; raising a djed stood for his rising again. Frames in his shape were filled with earth and sown with grain, so that the god sprouted green.
How Gerald Massey read him in 1907: Massey writes Asar as well as Osiris, and Un-nefer, “the Good Being”. He reads Osiris as the god in matter: the body, the mummy, the life of nature that dies and returns each year in the flood and the harvest. Horus, in his reading, is the soul, and Ra the spirit. For Massey, Osiris is never truly dead, only sleeping until Horus raises him. He argues that the Gospel story of Lazarus grew from the raising of Osiris, and the name from El-Asar, “the Osiris”.
What scholars say now: Massey’s link between Osiris, the flood and the grain agrees with what Egyptologists say. His derivation of Lazarus is not accepted: the name is the Greek form of the Hebrew Eleazar, “God has helped”, and scholars do not accept that the Gospel stories were drawn from the Osiris myth. Unlike Lazarus, Osiris does not return to the world of the living: he lives on as king of the dead. The fullest account of his myth comes late, from the Greek writer Plutarch.
Where you meet him today: At Abydos, the temple of Seti I still shows the raising of the djed. Bronze figures of Osiris are in most large Egyptian collections.
In Massey’s words: “Every year Osiris, the great green one in vegetation, died to rise again in the fruits of the earth.” (Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (1907), Book XII, p. 867)
In the app: Trainer › Symbol Trainer › Djed pillar. In the app, the Symbol Trainer explains the djed pillar, the backbone of Osiris, and the Word Trainer sets Massey’s Asar and Un-nefer beside Osiris and Wennefer.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

Next questions

Get it on Google Play