More than a century after British archaeologist Flinders Petrie uncovered hundreds of people buried in subsidiary graves surrounding the tombs of Egypt’s First Dynasty rulers at Abydos in Upper Egypt, new research has revived the possibility that some may have been deliberately killed to accompany their rulers into the afterlife.
When Petrie excavated the graves, he suspected that the people buried around the royal tombs had been killed as part of funerary rituals. However, the absence of clear signs of injury on their skeletons left the interpretation open to debate for decades.
A new study has revisited the ancient remains using modern forensic and anthropological methods, uncovering evidence that some of the individuals buried around the royal funerary complexes suffered head injuries around the time of death. The findings strengthen the possibility that members of the royal retinue were deliberately killed during the earliest period of the Egyptian state.
The study, published recently in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, reassessed human remains from subsidiary graves associated with First Dynasty rulers at Umm el-Qa’ab in Abydos, dating from roughly 3078 to 2900 BCE. Members of the royal household, officials, and craftspeople were buried around the rulers’ tombs.
Roselyn Campbell, a researcher in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University and author of the study, said the main problem was not necessarily a lack of evidence, but the limitations of the methods available to early researchers. Injuries that were dismissed a century ago as damage occurring after burial can now be identified in some cases as fractures sustained while the bones still retained properties associated with living tissue.
Campbell examined 46 skulls preserved in the Duckworth Laboratory collection at the University of Cambridge and found evidence of injuries sustained around the time of death in 18 of them, or about 39% of the sample. The most common injuries were linear fractures extending across the skull bones, while sharp-force trauma was also identified, including a penetrating wound to the side of the head and a cut near the eye.
The significance of the findings, Campbell explained, lies partly in the fact that Petrie himself had ruled out fatal injuries, even though he remained convinced that the large number of people buried around the kings was difficult to explain as a series of unrelated natural deaths. He therefore suggested that some may have been killed, or even buried alive, to serve the ruler after death.
Campbell points to a striking irony: Petrie may actually have seen some of the fractures but lacked the knowledge needed to determine when they had occurred. In several cases, the wax he used to stabilise the skulls was applied around the fractured areas themselves, suggesting that he had noticed weaknesses in those locations but interpreted them as damage caused by burial or decomposition.
The study does not support the familiar image of an Egyptian ruler bringing down a heavy stone mace on the heads of victims. A blow from such a weapon would be expected to produce depressed fractures, whereas most of the injuries identified were linear fractures. According to forensic comparisons used in the study, these injuries are more consistent with blows delivered by a broad, flat object made of wood or another relatively light material.
Campbell also cautioned against reducing the findings to a simple scene of mass killing. Some of the skulls showed no evidence of injury, while it is impossible to determine whether fractures sustained around the time of death occurred immediately before death, during it, or even several hours or days afterward, when bones may still retain characteristics similar to those of living tissue.
Nor can the study confirm Petrie’s hypothesis that some individuals were buried alive. Unusual positions of the arms and legs could be explained by movement of the body during decomposition or by the way the bodies were placed inside the graves, rather than necessarily indicating attempts by living people to escape.
The study also faces significant limitations because of the nature of the surviving collection. The skulls available today represent only about 5% to 15% of the individuals originally buried in each funerary complex, while most of the bones from the rest of the body have been lost. Some skulls were also damaged during transport or covered with layers of paraffin wax that obscured important details.
As a result, it remains difficult to determine whether the surviving sample accurately represents the wider population of people buried around the First Dynasty royal tombs. Nevertheless, the evidence provides new support for the possibility that at least some members of the royal retinue may have died violently as part of the funerary practices of Egypt’s earliest rulers.
