New forensic evidence suggests that some of ancient Egypt’s earliest rulers had members of their royal households killed when they died, possibly so those individuals could continue serving them in the afterlife. The discovery sheds new light on a disturbing burial practice that archaeologists suspected more than a century ago but could not prove.
The evidence comes from ancient skulls recovered near royal tombs at Abydos, Egypt, where members of the First Dynasty were buried roughly 5,000 years ago. When archaeologist Flinders Petrie excavated the graves in the 1920s, he noticed that unusually large numbers of people had been buried around the kings. He suspected that these individuals had been sacrificed following their rulers’ deaths, but he could not identify physical evidence of fatal injuries.
Now, a modern forensic examination has uncovered signs of potentially deadly head trauma in 18 of 46 skulls, representing approximately 39% of the individuals studied. The findings provide compelling new support for the theory that human sacrifice played a role in the burial traditions of ancient Egypt’s first kings.
“I was drawn to these retainers partly because, even though they were buried around royalty, they are mostly relegated to footnotes in the grander narrative,” said Dr. Roselyn Campbell of Purdue University, who led the research published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. Campbell is also the author of the forthcoming book State-sanctioned Violence and Human Sacrifice in Early Dynastic Egypt (Routledge Press).
“Who were these people and how did they view the ruler and their own role in his or her life and death?”
A 5,000-Year-Old Mystery Surrounding Egypt’s First Kings
Around 3000 BCE, the earliest kings of a unified Egypt constructed elaborate burial complexes at Abydos. These sites included royal tombs, additional burial chambers, and enclosed areas believed to have been used for funeral ceremonies.
Surrounding the main structures were numerous smaller graves arranged in rows. Some royal burial sites were accompanied by hundreds of these subsidiary burials, raising questions about why so many people had been buried in close association with a single ruler.
“Each subsidiary burial was a simple chamber in a row of dozens of others,” said Campbell. “Some people had a simple coffin. Most people had a few grave goods, like ceramic vessels, and many graves also included small objects like copper tools, projectile points, or small ivory figurines. Petrie found a few grave markers that had names and sometimes official titles on them. The titles seem to mostly refer to lower- or mid-level officials as well as artisans.”
The extraordinary concentration of graves led Petrie to propose that the people buried alongside the kings were victims of a practice known as retainer sacrifice.
“Retainer sacrifice is a type of human sacrifice where those close to a ruler are killed when the ruler dies,” explained Campbell. “In many cultures, retainer sacrifice is practiced because of beliefs that the sacrificed individuals will continue to serve the ruler in some kind of afterlife, but retainer sacrifice can also be a visceral display of the ruler’s power. Some retainers might have volunteered to die to achieve eternal life or honor, others may have been chosen or even forced.”
Despite the suspicious circumstances, Petrie could not find convincing evidence that the individuals had died violently. Without identifiable fatal injuries, the possibility of human sacrifice remained an unresolved archaeological mystery.
Campbell decided to revisit the original excavation evidence, hoping that modern forensic techniques could reveal clues that had escaped investigators a century earlier.
Modern Forensics Reveals Evidence of Violent Deaths
Although Petrie documented his excavations carefully, he eventually reburied most of the human remains. He did, however, preserve a selection of skulls, some of which were transferred to the United Kingdom.
Campbell located 46 of these skulls in the Duckworth Collection at Cambridge University and examined them using contemporary forensic knowledge.
The results revealed injuries that had previously gone unrecognized. Eighteen skulls showed substantial cranial trauma, primarily in the form of linear fractures. Petrie had apparently interpreted these cracks as damage caused by natural processes rather than injuries sustained by living people.
Modern forensic methods made it possible to identify the fractures as perimortem injuries, meaning they occurred around the time of death. Their characteristics suggest that some of the individuals may have suffered deliberate, potentially fatal blows to the head.
“The injuries on the preserved crania are generally linear fractures, which would likely cause rapid unconsciousness, internal bleeding, and death,” said Campbell, who also reported evidence of sharp-force trauma on some of the 18 skulls, including a chopping injury to one individual’s eye.
These findings suggest that at least 39% of the examined individuals may have been deliberately killed, providing important new evidence in support of the long-standing human sacrifice hypothesis.
How Were Ancient Egypt’s Royal Attendants Killed?
Although the skull injuries offer strong evidence of violence, the precise circumstances of the deaths remain uncertain.
Ancient Egyptian artwork frequently portrays kings striking enemies with maces, but Campbell noted that the royal attendants buried at Abydos were not enemy combatants. The injuries also do not match the damage typically associated with these weapons.
A mace would generally produce depressed skull fractures, while the injuries identified in this study were predominantly linear. Such fractures are more commonly associated with impacts from broad, flat objects or severe falls.
Accidental falls cannot be entirely excluded. However, a fall powerful enough to fracture the skull would likely have caused injuries elsewhere in the skeleton. Such damage should have appeared in Petrie’s excavation records or photographs, yet no corresponding evidence was documented.
The researchers also cannot determine how the remaining individuals died. Some may have died naturally, while others could have been killed using methods that left no recognizable marks on their bones, such as asphyxiation.
Additional injuries might also have been found if the rest of their skeletons were available for examination. Unfortunately, most of those remains were reburied more than a century ago, leaving researchers with only part of the physical evidence.
Ancient Skulls Reveal New Clues to Egypt’s Dark Past
The findings demonstrate how archaeological collections can preserve important clues long after their original excavation. Even when evidence is incomplete, advances in scientific techniques can provide new answers to questions that earlier researchers were unable to resolve.
For Campbell, the possibility of locating and examining the remaining skeletal material offers an especially intriguing opportunity to learn more about the people buried around Egypt’s earliest kings.
“If I had unlimited resources, I would love to figure out where the bodies of these individuals might be and analyze them!” said Campbell. “Still, this study shows how much new information about the past can be revealed when we revisit previous data armed with updated methods and knowledge, even for datasets that are incomplete and imperfect like this one.”