New research suggests that servants and officials who accompanied early Egyptian kings in death may have been sacrificed, according to an analysis of ancient skulls from a royal cemetery near Abydos. The findings provide fresh insight into burial practices during Egypt’s First Dynasty, dating back to around 3,000 BC.

The royal burial site at Umm el-Qa’ab contains the tombs and enclosures of early rulers, including kings and queens, alongside graves believed to belong to individuals closely associated with the royal household. These include ladies-in-waiting, seal-bearers, inspectors, and craftsmen. While the first king of the dynasty, Aha, had relatively few subsidiary burials, subsequent rulers were accompanied by hundreds of such graves clustered around their tombs.

The practice of retainer sacrifice—killing servants to accompany a deceased ruler into the afterlife—was initially proposed by the archaeologist Flinders Petrie, who excavated the cemetery in the 1920s. However, earlier analyses of the skeletal remains found no clear evidence of trauma, leading some researchers to question whether these individuals died naturally and were later reinterred at the site.

Dr. Roselyn Campbell of Purdue University has revisited the remains, examining 46 skulls from graves surrounding the funerary enclosures of three rulers: King Djer, King Djet, and Queen Merneith. Her study, published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, identified signs of potentially fatal injuries in 18 of these crania. The trauma includes fractures and, in one instance, a chopping injury near the eye.

Campbell suggests that these injuries indicate the individuals may have been deliberately killed around the time of burial. She argues that Petrie may have overlooked or misinterpreted such damage during his earlier excavations. The nature of the fractures implies they were not inflicted by maces—commonly depicted in Egyptian iconography—but rather by blunt objects possibly made of wood or antler.

Despite these findings, Campbell cautions that not all retainers show evidence of trauma, leaving open the possibility that some were sacrificed while others died of natural causes or were buried for different reasons. She emphasizes that retainer sacrifice may have been practiced selectively rather than universally.

The study adds new dimensions to the long-standing debate over human sacrifice in early dynastic Egypt. By providing the first direct examination of injuries on remains from these specific tombs, it challenges previous assumptions and offers a more nuanced understanding of how ancient Egyptians honored their deceased rulers and their retinues.