Forensic tests on 46 skulls from 5,000-year-old skulls from Abydos, Egypt, show that early royal attendants suffered fatal head trauma.
Archaeologist Flinders Petrie excavated subsidiary graves around the royal tombs of Egypt’s First Dynasty in the 1920s. He suspected attendants were killed when rulers died.
Petrie found no physical evidence of fatal injuries in his excavation records. He reburied most of the remains and sent a selection of skulls to the United Kingdom.
A modern examination of those 46 skulls from the Duckworth Collection at Cambridge University identified signs of deadly head trauma in 18 crania.
The findings appeared in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology on 04 October 2026. About 39% of the individuals in the sample may have been deliberately killed.
“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.
Campbell led the research. She authored the forthcoming book State-sanctioned Violence and Human Sacrifice in Early Dynastic Egypt from Routledge Press.
“Who were these people and how did they view the ruler and their own role in his or her life and death?” Campbell asked.
The funerary complexes at Abydos were built around 3000 BCE by the first kings of a unified Egypt. Subsidiary burials sat in rows of simple chambers around main royal tombs.
Graves contained coffins, ceramic vessels, copper tools, projectile points, and ivory figurines. Petrie recovered grave markers with names and official titles of lower- or mid-level officials and artisans.
“Retainer sacrifice is a type of human sacrifice where those close to a ruler are killed when the ruler dies,” Campbell said.
“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,” Campbell said.
Campbell used modern forensic knowledge to determine that linear skull fractures occurred around the time of death. Petrie had mistaken the damage for natural causes.
The examined crania came from subsidiary graves surrounding the funerary enclosures of Djer, Djet, and Merneith.
“The injuries on the preserved crania are generally linear fractures,” Campbell said. They would likely cause rapid unconsciousness, internal bleeding, and death.
Some of the 18 injured skulls also displayed sharp-force trauma. One individual had a chopping injury to the eye.
“Each subsidiary burial was a simple chamber in a row of dozens of others,” Campbell said.
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.
Ancient Egyptian artwork frequently depicts kings striking enemies with maces. Maces produce depressed fractures with bone pushed inward, whereas the Abydos injuries were predominantly linear. Such linear fractures link to broad objects or severe falls. A fall severe enough to fracture the skull would have broken other bones that would have appeared in Petrie’s photographic records.
“If I had unlimited resources, I would love to figure out where the bodies of these individuals might be and analyze them!” Campbell said.
“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,” Campbell said.
