Outlining his theory in a new study, author Nicholas Brown examines the presence of four gilded wooden staffs known as pedj-aha emblems, which resemble the hieroglyph “res” and were found in one corner of the tomb. This, says Brown, may indicate a connection to an ancient Egyptian text called the “Books of the Underworld and Sky”, in which the god Horus holds up a “res” symbol in order to revive the mummy of a dead pharaoh, who then takes the form of the deity Osiris.

However, because this text first appeared a few decades after King Tut’s death, the association between the four staffs and the Awakening of Osiris rite had until now been overlooked. Yet Brown says that as this may be the earliest archaeological evidence for this ritual, there’s good reason to suspect that the ritual may have been created specifically for Tutankhamun, as his advisors sought to solidify the pharaoh’s links to the traditional Egyptian pantheon.

The need to do so stems from the fact that Tutankhamun’s father Akhenaten had forsaken these deities and attempted to implement a new, monotheistic religion. According to Brown, though, “Tutankhamun’s restoration program during his reign not only included restoring the official state religion and reopening the closed temples, but it also included the restoration of more traditional afterlife beliefs and royal funerary rites and rituals.”

The author goes on to cite another Egyptologist, Salima Imram, whose work has “convincingly argued that the unusual mummification of Tutankhamun for a royal body was done to emphasize his nature as a newly transfigured Osiris… and that the king was being shown as Osiris, more so than was usual in royal burials, so as to literally emphasize not only the divinity of the king but also his identification with Osiris in the afterlife.”

For instance, Tutankhamun’s embalmers went to great lengths to mummify his penis in an erect position, possibly signifying a connection to the regenerative power of Osiris.

To bolster his hypothesis, Brown re-analyzes four clay troughs that were found near the head of Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus. While Howard Carter’s original interpretation of these trays as stands for the pedj-aha emblems is still widely accepted, Brown suggests that they are in fact too small for this purpose and may therefore have served an alternative, ritualistic function.

Significantly, the four troughs are all placed on reed matting – a feature strongly associated with ritual offerings. 

Moreover, the trays are made of Nile mud. “This potentially provides an additional connection to Osiris, who was Lord of the Land of Egypt, symbolized by the rich soil of the Nile inundation, with connotations of fertility and regeneration,” writes Brown.

Thus, the troughs “may have been an object used for the king’s Awakening of Osiris rite, serving to hold libations or liquid offerings of some kind,” he adds.

Considering all of this evidence, the study author contends that “the res/pedj-aha emblems symbolized a command or labeled the deceased king as ‘awake’ and could have functioned in conjunction with the four small clay troughs that held liquid libations to revivify the king’s mummy.”

“It is likely that one of the multiple funerary rituals that was represented in Tutankhamun’s Burial Chamber is the Awakening of Osiris rite, and the layout of the objects within the chamber are a physical representation of this ceremony, meant to be performed eternally for the deceased king to ensure his life in the afterlife,” concludes Brown.

The study has been published in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology.