A new forensic study of human remains excavated in the 1920s has added fresh evidence to the long-running debate over whether early Egyptian pharaohs practiced "retainer sacrifice." Bioarchaeologist Roselyn Campbell of Purdue University re-examined 46 crania from the Umm el-Qaab cemetery at Abydos, now stored at Cambridge University, and found that 18 of them, about 39 percent, bear linear fractures consistent with blunt force trauma. The findings were published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.
The crania came from subsidiary graves around royal tombs and enclosures that were apparently sealed at the same time, a pattern that some archaeologists interpret as mass sacrifice of servants and officials. Campbell told Ars Technica that the debate has often been polarized, but "nobody's actually looked at the bones in a very long time." She cautions that the collection is incomplete—Petrie measured and reburied the long bones, and the skulls were coated in paraffin—so the trauma evidence is suggestive rather than conclusive.
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