Skull Fractures in Egyptian Tombs Strengthen Case for Royal Retainer Sacrifice

Research on remains excavated from the Umm el-Qa'ab royal cemetery near Abydos, dating to roughly 3,000 BCE, has found signs of trauma on numerous ancient skulls, reinforcing the view that officials and craftspeople who served early Egyptian kings may have been sacrificed when the ruler died.

According to the study published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, author Roselyn Campbell of Purdue University in the United States said Umm el-Qa'ab is the burial place of the kings of Egypt's First Dynasty. Beyond the royal tombs, the surrounding area also holds graves thought to belong to members of the royal household, including court women, seal-bearers, inspectors and craftspeople.

Campbell writes: "While Aha, the first king of the First Dynasty, appears to have had only a few subsidiary tombs, his successors had hundreds of subsidiary tombs around their tombs and enclosures."

The servants' tombs were excavated by the British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in the 1920s. He believed they were evidence of human sacrifice, a view some later experts shared. Petrie, however, found no signs of trauma on the remains. While he suggested these people may have been buried alive, others argued they died naturally and were reburied at Abydos when the king died.

Campbell re-examined the skulls of 46 retainers excavated from tombs around the funerary enclosures of three different rulers — King Djer, King Djet and Queen Merneith — held in the Duckworth Collection at the University of Cambridge.

She said: "The question of whether retainer sacrifice was practiced in Egypt has been debated for more than a century, but this is the first study to examine human remains directly from the tombs themselves."

The results showed that 18 of the 46 skulls bore signs of potentially fatal trauma such as fractures, including one case with a cut to the eye. Campbell believes Petrie may have seen the skull fractures but did not recognize them as injuries inflicted at the time of death rather than later damage.

According to her, the fractures are unlikely to have been caused by a mace — the weapon often depicted in ancient Egyptian art as the tool with which the triumphant king defeats his enemies — and were more likely inflicted by flat, broad objects made of wood or leather.

Campbell said: "With the skulls that show no trauma, we cannot be certain they were sacrificed. It is entirely possible that some retainers were sacrificed and others were not. With a sample size so small compared with the original burial population, we cannot see the full extent of these funerary rites, nor can we be sure this sample represents all the retainers."

She also noted that the number of subsidiary tombs fell sharply and appears to have disappeared by the start of the Second Dynasty.

Salima Ikram, a professor at the American University in Cairo, commented that while the idea of retainer sacrifice is not entirely new, "this paper is one of the few times modern, rigorous methods have been used to assess these remains." She added: "This practice was short-lived, when people were replaced by figurines. It is possible that some or all of the retainers felt this was an honor and that they would enjoy eternal life serving the divine king, though they may also have been outraged, terrified and tried to escape this fate."

Dr. Dawn McCormack, an Egyptologist at Samford University in Alabama, said similar forms of sacrifice occurred in many cultures and periods, and noted that not everyone in the Egyptian region was submissive. She said: "If you really think about those scenes, it would be horrifying." Although the research involved only a small number of skulls from the cemetery, she said "the idea that some people may have been killed brutally is something we could expect in reality."