This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Over 500 years before the building of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, First Dynasty kings were buried in a tomb surrounded by many burials of household officials and artisans—many of which seem to have taken place at the same time, a suspiciously high number of simultaneous deaths. The original excavators thought that these individuals were the victims of retainer sacrifice, where people are killed after the death of a ruler to act as their attendants in the afterlife.
But they didn't find evidence of any wounds on the bones, leaving the cause of death in doubt. Now a major re-examination of a sample of the remains, using modern forensic knowledge, has identified numerous instances of cranial trauma that were likely fatal. Scientists have confirmed that numerous burials clustered around First Dynasty tombs in Abydos, Egypt, reveal the sacrifice of royal household members after the death of kings.
These graves were excavated in the 1920s by Flinders Petrie, who suspected that so many people couldn't have died of natural causes simultaneously—but found no corroborating evidence of fatal wounds. Now, a reassessment of a sample of skulls from the site, using modern forensic methods, indicates that at least 39% of these individuals may have been deliberately killed by blows to the head. "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, author of the article in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology and of a forthcoming book, State-sanctioned Violence and Human Sacrifice in Early Dynastic Egypt. "Who were these people and how did they view the ruler and their own role in his or her life and death?" The funerary complexes at Abydos were built around 3000 B.C. by the first kings of a unified Egypt. In addition to the royal tombs themselves, the complexes consisted of chamber tombs and enclosures probably used for funerary rituals, as well as subsidiary burials surrounding the tombs and enclosures.
"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 sheer number of these subsidiary graves—some burials are surrounded by hundreds—made Petrie suspect that the burials reflected retainer sacrifice. "Retainer sacrifice is a type of human sacrifice where those close to a ruler are killed when the ruler dies," explained Campbell.
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