A new analysis of forensic remains buried alongside the tombs of the first kings of Egypt has found evidence that some members of their royal houses may have been deliberately killed after the rulers’ deaths. The study, published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, identified potentially fatal cranial trauma in 18 of the 46 skulls analyzed, which corresponds to about 39% of the sample.
The burials were discovered at Abydos, Egypt, and date to the First Dynasty, around 3000 BCE, more than 500 years before the construction of the Great Pyramid. The funerary complexes included the kings’ tombs, structures probably intended for funeral rituals, and numerous secondary burials of people associated with the royal house.
The excavations were carried out in the 1920s by archaeologist Flinders Petrie. The high number of deaths apparently occurring in a similar period led him to propose the hypothesis of a case of ‘servant sacrifice’, a practice in which people close to a ruler were killed after his death to continue serving him in the afterlife.
However, Petrie did not at that time find clear signs of fatal injuries in the skeletal remains, leaving the causes of death unresolved.
“Who were these people and how did they view the ruler and their own role in his or her life and death?” asks Roselyn Campbell, from Purdue University, the author of the study.
An investigation reopened decades later
Campbell sought the remains that could still be analyzed from the original excavations. Petrie had reburied a large portion of the human remains, but kept some skulls, sending part of them to the United Kingdom.
The researcher located 46 of these skulls in the Duckworth Collection, at the University of Cambridge, and re-examined them using current forensic science knowledge. In 18 of the cases she found signs of significant cranial trauma, especially linear fractures that Petrie is believed to have interpreted as damage caused naturally.
The current analysis allows considering these damages as injuries occurring near the moment of death.
“The injuries on the preserved skulls are generally linear fractures, which would probably cause rapid loss of consciousness, internal bleeding and death,” explains Campbell. The researcher also identified indications of trauma caused by sharp objects in some of the 18 skulls, including an injury inflicted by a blow to the orbital region of one of the individuals.
The exact manner in which these people died remains, however, unknown. Representations of Egyptian kings striking enemies with a mace could suggest a possible weapon, but investigators consider that this type of blow would produce fractures different from those observed in these skulls.
The identified linear fractures are generally associated with a weapon with a broad, flat surface or with a fall. In the latter case, a fall with enough force to cause a skull fracture would probably have also caused other injuries to the skeleton, which could have been recorded in Petrie’s photographs or notes.
What happened to the rest?
The researchers also cannot determine what happened to the other individuals buried beside the royal tombs. Some may have died of natural causes. Others may have been killed in a way that left no identifiable marks on the bones, such as asphyxia, or may present evidence that could only be detected through analysis of the remaining elements of the skeletons.
Campbell herself underscores that limitation, but she considers that the new analysis demonstrates the potential of revisiting ancient archaeological collections with more advanced methods.
“If I had unlimited resources, I would love to discover where the bodies of these individuals might be and analyze them!”
Still, she adds, “this study shows how much new information about the past can be revealed when we revisit earlier data equipped with updated methods and knowledge, even in the case of incomplete and imperfect datasets like this one.”
The work thus reinforces the hypothesis that at least part of the burials associated with the early kings of Egypt may be related to violent deaths occurring in the funerary context, though the extent and nature of this practice remain to be clarified.
