Margaret Murray

Margaret Murray led the first scientific excavation of the Osireion in 1902 and published the first full account.

Margaret Alice Murray (1863โ€“1963) was a British Egyptologist and archaeologist who participated in Flinders Petrie's excavation at Abydos in 1902. She directed the clearance of the Osireion and authored the first systematic publication of the monument.

Her report, The Osireion at Abydos (Egypt Research Account, 1904), documents the architectural remains as found during excavation, including the massive granite monoliths, the subterranean plan, and the hieroglyphic inscriptions from the Book of Gates and the Book of What is in the Underworld (Amduat).

Despite its early date, Murray's publication established the basic architectural understanding of the Osireion that all subsequent scholarship has built upon. The full text is freely available through the Internet Archive.