[MUSIC PLAYING] Abydos, Egypt, February 2011. 300 miles south of Cairo, looters target what was once the most sacred site to the ancient Egyptians during the time of the pharaohs. It was here that Egypt's first rulers were buried and the earliest forms of hieroglyphs were found, as well as an inscription bearing the names and chronology of the first kings of ancient Egypt.
Abydos was considered sacred to the god, Osiris, lord of the dead and Egypt's first otherworldly ruler. According to ancient legends, his dismembered head was buried at the site. So who was Osiris?
Was he simply an ancestor of the ancient Egyptians? Or was he a god that descended to Earth, you know, from the sky world? Obviously, we cannot say today.
But we know he was said to have existed in an age that was known as Zep Tepi, the First Time. In the 13th century BC, the pharaoh Seti I was building his temple here in Abydos when, according to some accounts, he had an encounter with the god, Osiris. When King Seti was building his temple, he had a dream in which the Egyptian god, Osiris, appeared to him.
And he told Seti that if he was to dig behind his temple location that he would find something of enormous significance. Seti digs 40 feet beneath the temple and finds the tomb of Osiris. For hundreds of years, no such tomb was known to exist in Abydos.
But at the turn of the 20th century, archaeologists digging behind the temple of Seti I unearthed a massive underground structure consisting of granite and sandstone blocks, some weighing nearly 60 tons. The Osirian, as it is now known, was found buried under 40 feet of silt. And ancient astronaut theorists are convinced that further excavations would reveal something much more profound hidden within it.
The interesting thing about it is that on the exterior wall of the Temple of Seti is inscribed what is called the head or tower of Osiris, what looks like some kind of an ancient antenna type of a device. It's clearly technological or mechanical looking. According to legend, it has been buried and is awaiting rediscovery.
