Strabo's 25 BC account and the Old Kingdom dating debate at the Osireion

October 23, 2026EgyptArchitectureShare

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Key facts

• Strabo visited Abydos around 25 BC and described the 'Memnonium' (transcribed 'Mimonium') above the city as a royal building of solid stone, with a fountain at great depth reached by descending vaulted galleries of monoliths of surprising size - the earliest known written description of the site later called the Osireion.
• The video notes uncertainty over whether Strabo's comparison to 'the labyrinth' refers to the Greek labyrinth of Crete or the Egyptian labyrinth of Hawara.
• The Osireion's core mass is sandstone with massive granite pillars and red granite columns; the presenters note sandstone was used from the First and Second Dynasty onward and intermittently thereafter, so the stone type alone cannot prove the structure is a later build.
• The presenters argue the construction style is Old Kingdom (4th-5th Dynasty), noting the site lacks the ornamented, axial temple type normal for the New Kingdom, and that it has no original glyph decoration apart from one rear panel.
• Seti I's temple at Abydos has an unusual L-shaped plan that turns aside; some Egyptologists are said to explain this as the builders diverting the temple course when foundation trenches hit the already-buried Osireion.
• The two complexes do not connect; the Osireion sits roughly 25 feet below the current ground level of the Seti I temple according to the presenters' estimate.
• Entry is by a modern wooden staircase or by a long descending tunnel that begins in the desert and leads to a framed frontal view of the Great Hall.

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