Ancient Egyptians sacrificed servants when kings died, forensic tests show

Forensic examination of human remains found around the funerary complexes of Ancient Egyptian kings has uncovered evidence that they belonged to servants who were sacrificed when the monarchs died, according to a new study.

The remains of these servants, or retainers, were first excavated from the funerary complexes at Abydos, eastern Egypt, which date from around 3000 BC, in the 1920s.

Archaeologists at the time suspected that the individuals had been sacrificed, but no evidence of their cause of death was found, study author Roselyn A. Campbell, a postdoctoral researcher at Purdue University in Indiana who examined the skulls from that original excavation, told CNN on Monday.

“By consulting modern forensic studies and advances in our understanding of how human bodies react to injuries and to decay processes over time, I was able to identify clear evidence of head injuries in some of these individuals that occurred around the time of death,” she said.

“These injuries, combined with the archaeological context, strongly suggest that at least some of the retainers were killed and then buried around the tombs of these rulers,” Campbell added.

It was the “sheer number” of graves that led Flinders Petrie, the British archaeologist who originally excavated the remains in the early 20th century, to suspect that the burials were a result of human sacrifice, according to a news release.

“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,” Campbell said in the release.

“Some retainers might have volunteered to die to achieve eternal life or honor, others may have been chosen or even forced.”

Petrie took photographs of the remains and kept records. He then reburied most of them, apart from the skulls, 46 of which Campbell found at Cambridge University.

“The injuries on the preserved crania are generally linear fractures, which would likely cause rapid unconsciousness, internal bleeding, and death,” Campbell said in the release, adding that linear fractures are generally caused by a flat, wide weapon.

Egypt Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities/AP

Ancient tombs more than 3,000 years old unearthed in Egypt

Of the 46 preserved crania examined as part of the study, potentially lethal trauma was found in 18 of them, equivalent to 39%.

Campbell cautioned that this doesn’t mean that the hundreds of other burials in these areas were also victims of human sacrifice.

“With such a small and incomplete data set, and so many millennia having passed since these people were buried, we simply can’t be entirely certain if all these individuals were sacrificed, or only some of them, or if there is some other explanation that has been lost over time,” she said.

Some of them may have died naturally, or others may have been killed by asphyxiation or another method that isn’t visible, she added.

Katherine Slinger, a lecturer in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Manchester, England, who was not involved in the study, told CNN that while it had long been assumed that the royal retainers were sacrificed when a king died, little detail was known about the practice.

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“The manner in which these retainers were killed has previously remained unclear, with theories ranging from strangulation to poisoning,” Slinger said.

“This is the first time that forensic evidence has supported this theory of human sacrifice and proved the manner in which at least some of these individuals were killed.”

Campbell is now preparing a book manuscript on the topic, slated for publication in 2027, which will look deeper “into who these retainers were, the context of Egyptian thought and society at this time, and more broadly how we study and understand violence and sacrifice in the past,” she said.

Karl Harrison, a forensic archaeologist at the University of Exeter, England, who was not involved in the study, told CNN that the findings are “genuinely really interesting.”

However, he warned against over-interpreting the intentions of the ancient Egyptians.

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“While forensic science can help to understand patterns of injury, care must be taken in assessing what this means in terms of intentionality,” Harrison said via email.

“Ephemeral behaviours of past human cultures — especially those without written records or recorded in the writings of other peoples — offer a social complexity that defies our ability to comprehensively reconstruct,” he added .

The study was published in the journal Frontiers on Monday.

一项新的研究表明，对古埃及国王陵墓周围发现的人类遗骸进行法医检验后发现，这些遗骸属于君主去世时被献祭的仆人。

这些仆人或侍从的遗骸最早于 20 世纪 20 年代在埃及东部阿拜多斯的墓葬群中被挖掘出来，这些墓葬群的历史可以追溯到公元前 3000 年左右。

当时的考古学家怀疑这些人是被献祭的，但没有找到他们的死因证据。该研究的作者、印第安纳州普渡大学的博士后研究员罗丝琳·A·坎贝尔（Roselyn A. Campbell）周一告诉 CNN，她检查了最初挖掘出的头骨。

“通过参考现代法医研究以及我们对人体如何对损伤和腐烂过程做出反应的认识的进步，我能够确定其中一些人在死亡前后头部受伤的明确证据，”她说。

坎贝尔补充说：“这些伤势，结合考古背景，强烈表明至少有一些侍从被杀害，然后被埋葬在这些统治者的陵墓周围。”

据新闻稿称，正是坟墓的“数量之多”让20世纪初最初挖掘这些遗骸的英国考古学家弗林德斯·皮特里怀疑这些埋葬是人类献祭的结果。

坎贝尔在新闻稿中表示：“在许多文化中，人们之所以会进行臣民献祭，是因为相信被献祭的人会在某种来世继续为统治者服务，但臣民献祭也可以是统治者权力的一种直接展现。”

“有些侍从可能是自愿赴死以求得永生或荣誉，而另一些可能是被选中的，甚至是被迫的。”

佩特里拍摄了遗骸的照片并做了记录。之后，他将大部分遗骸重新安葬，只留下头骨，其中46个头骨后来被坎贝尔在剑桥大学发现。

坎贝尔在新闻稿中表示：“保存下来的头骨上的伤势通常是线性骨折，这很可能导致迅速失去意识、内出血和死亡。”他还补充说，线性骨折通常是由扁平、宽大的武器造成的。

埃及旅游和文物部/美联社

埃及出土距今3000多年的古墓

在研究过程中检查的 46 个保存完好的头骨中，有 18 个头骨发现了可能致命的创伤，占比 39%。

坎贝尔提醒说，这并不意味着这些地区其他数百个墓葬也是活人祭祀的受害者。

“由于数据量如此之小且不完整，而且这些人被埋葬至今已过去数千年，我们根本无法完全确定这些人是否全部被献祭，还是只有一部分人被献祭，或者是否存在一些随着时间流逝而消失的其他解释，”她说。

她补充说，其中一些人可能是自然死亡，另一些人可能是窒息而死，或者死于其他看不见的方式。

英国曼彻斯特大学埃及考古学讲师凯瑟琳·斯林格（Katherine Slinger）并未参与这项研究，她告诉 CNN，虽然长期以来人们一直认为国王去世时会将皇家侍从献祭，但人们对这种做法的细节知之甚少。

旅游和文物部

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斯林格说：“这些侍从的死因此前一直不明，各种理论层出不穷，从勒死到中毒都有。”

“这是法医证据首次支持活人献祭理论，并证明了至少部分遇难者的死亡方式。”

坎贝尔表示，她目前正在准备一本关于这个主题的书稿，计划于 2027 年出版，该书将更深入地探讨“这些侍从是谁，当时埃及的思想和社会背景，以及更广泛地探讨我们如何研究和理解过去的暴力和牺牲”。

英国埃克塞特大学的法医考古学家卡尔·哈里森（Karl Harrison）并未参与这项研究，他告诉 CNN，研究结果“确实非常有趣”。

但他警告说，不要过度解读古埃及人的意图。

科学家为在建造狮身人面像的岩石中发现的古代鳄鱼物种命名。

哈里森通过电子邮件表示：“虽然法医学可以帮助了解伤害模式，但在评估其在故意性方面意味着什么时，必须谨慎。”

他补充说：“过去人类文化的短暂行为——尤其是那些没有文字记录或未被其他民族记录的行为——展现出的社会复杂性，使我们无法全面地进行重建。”

该研究于周一发表在《前沿》杂志上。