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The djed pillar: the backbone of Osiris

14 October 2026

The djed pillar means stability. As a hieroglyph it writes ḏd, said 'djed': to be stable, to endure. From the New Kingdom on, Egyptians also saw it as the backbone of Osiris, the murdered god who rose again, so setting a djed upright meant putting Osiris back on his feet.

The sign is a column on a broad base with four crossbars stacked near the top. You will find it as a gold or faience amulet in museum cases, in long friezes on temple walls, and in the names of kings.

The pillar's first model is uncertain

The object the djed first pictured is uncertain. The usual guesses are a pole with sheaves of grain tied around it in tiers, or a tree trunk with its branches lopped off. Either would explain the crossbars at the top.

Under Djoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara, built around 2650 BC, the walls of the so-called blue chambers are faced with thousands of blue-green faience tiles, and arched panels there rest on rows of djed pillars. One panel has been rebuilt in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

At first the djed belonged to the gods of Memphis: Sokar, and Ptah, who was called 'the noble djed'. By the New Kingdom it was firmly tied to Osiris. The shaft became his spine and the crossbars his vertebrae.

Djed pillar

The pillar writes two consonants

The pillar is a two-consonant sign: ḏ, a sound like the j in 'jump', and d. Scribes could also spell the same two sounds with the cobra (ḏ) and the hand (d). That pair opens countless spells as ḏd-mdw, 'djed medu', 'words to be spoken'. There ḏd means 'to say', a different word with the same consonants, and the staff after it writes mdw, 'words'.

The pillar itself appears in royal names. Djedefre, son and successor of Khufu, wrote his name with three signs: the sun disc for Ra, put first out of respect, then the pillar, ḏd, then the horned viper, f, 'he'. Read in order it is ḏd.f-rꜥ, 'he endures like Ra'.

Most often the djed stands between two other signs in a fixed wish for the king:

ꜥnḫ ḏd wꜣs: life, stability and dominion
dj ꜥnḫ ḏd wꜣs: given life, stability and dominion
ḏd.f-rꜥ: he endures like Ra, Djedefre
ḏd-mdw: words to be spoken, at the head of spells

Cobra Hand Walking stick Sun Horned viper Ankh Was sceptre

Kings raised the djed with ropes

The pillar was also a real object, set up in a ritual. Priests and the king pulled a large djed from lying flat to standing with ropes, acting out Osiris getting back on his feet. The rite closed the festival of Sokar and Osiris in the month of Khoiak, and kings performed it at their jubilees.

The finest picture of it is in the tomb of Kheruef at Thebes, steward of Queen Tiye. Amenhotep III raises the pillar at his third jubilee, with Tiye beside him, and sixteen princesses shaking sistra take part in the same ceremonies.

The rite was performed above all at Busiris in the Delta, whose Egyptian name, Djedu, is written with the pillar. At Abydos, the other great city of Osiris, the djed appears again and again: in Seti I's temple the halls of Osiris behind the seven chapels include scenes of the pillar raised and honoured.

Seated god

Most djeds you will see are amulets

Amulets are the commonest place. Spell 155 of the Book of the Dead is a 'spell for a djed of gold', to be said over a golden pillar strung on sycamore fibre and placed at the neck of the dead on the day of burial. It speaks to the dead as Osiris: raise yourself, your backbone is yours. Gold was the ideal, but many surviving djed amulets are green or blue, in faience or stone.

On temple walls and coffins the djed often alternates with the tyet knot of Isis, or stands in a row with the ankh and the was sceptre. Good places to look:

the Temple of Seti I at Abydos, in the halls of Osiris
the Osireion behind it, built for the god
the blue faience panel from the Step Pyramid, rebuilt in Cairo's Egyptian Museum
amulet cases in almost any large Egyptian collection

Four crossbars make the djed

Start with the tall shaft, wider at the base. Then the four crossbars near the top, evenly spaced and a little wider than the shaft. A small capital on top finishes it.

Carved versions often show the shaft splaying at the foot and the bars drawn as thick ridges. Draw yours, and the pad tells you how close it comes to the sign.

Draw the djed pillar

Questions

What does the djed pillar symbolise?

Stability and endurance, and through Osiris, rising again after death, so it was buried with the dead and wished on the king.

How do you pronounce djed?

Most people say 'jed'. The Egyptian word had the consonants ḏ and d. Its vowel is a modern guess.

Is the djed in the 'Dendera light' reliefs part of an electric lamp?

In the crypts of the Dendera temple a djed holds up a lotus flower with a snake rising from it, sometimes read today as a lamp. The inscriptions name the snake as a form of the god Harsomtus, and Egyptologists read the scene as a picture of creation.

Who holds the djed sceptre?

Ptah, the god of Memphis and of craftsmen. He is shown wrapped like a mummy, holding a staff that combines the was sceptre, the ankh and the djed.

Glossary

amulet: A small charm worn by the living or wrapped with a mummy for protection, often shaped like a sign such as the ankh or the scarab.
ankh: The sign of life, ꜥnḫ, a cross with a loop on top. Gods hold it out to kings in temple scenes.
Book of the Dead: A collection of spells written on papyrus and placed in burials from the New Kingdom on, to guide the dead through the afterlife. Egyptians called it the Spells for Coming Forth by Day.
coffin: A box for the body, of wood or stone, often shaped like a person and painted with spells, names and gods. Rich burials nested several coffins inside a sarcophagus.
hieroglyphs: The picture signs of ancient Egyptian writing, used from about 3200 BC to AD 394. A sign can stand for sounds, for a whole word, or for the kind of thing a word means.
New Kingdom: Egypt's age of empire, about 1550 to 1069 BC, the time of Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II.
priest: A servant of a god in a temple, who washed, dressed and fed the god's statue each day. A high priest led the staff of a great temple.
pyramid: A royal tomb with four sloping sides meeting at a point, built in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza is the largest.
relief: A carving on a flat surface. In raised relief the background is cut away. In sunk relief the figures are cut into the stone.
scribe: A person trained to read and write, who kept accounts, wrote letters and copied texts. Few Egyptians could write, and scribes were well respected.
temple: The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.
tomb: A burial place: a pit, a mastaba, a pyramid or rooms cut into rock. Its chapel was where the family brought offerings.