Evidence of human sacrifice in ancient Egypt has been recovered from graves clustered around a group of first-century tombs.
The discovery is detailed in a recent paper in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, which reassesses the contents of burials first unearthed by Flinders Petrie, the father of Egyptian archaeology, in the 1920s.
At the time, Petrie had been suspicious of how so many simultaneous deaths could have occurred to result in the great number of burials at the site, yet found no evidence to prove that the interred were human sacrifice victims.
However, a century on, armed with newer forensic tools, researchers have uncovered evidence of skull trauma in almost half of the ancient Egyptian remains, suggesting their deaths were indeed the result of human sacrifice.
Suspected Human Sacrifice
The discovery was made at Abydos, where the funerary complexes were constructed sometime around 3000 BCE, during the First Dynasty. The royal tombs were not the only features of the area, with ancillary buildings dedicated to chamber tombs, ritual sites, and other related burials. Dozens of simple burial chambers formed rows, the interred bearing a small handful of grave goods such as ceramic vessels, ivory figures, and copper tools.
Some of the burial chambers bore names and titles, identifying the remains as those of artisans, along with low- and mid-level officials. The sheer volume led some to suspect that retainers were sacrificed to accompany royals into death.
“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, the study’s author. “Who were these people and how did they view the ruler and their own role in his or her life and death?”
“Retainer sacrifice is a type of human sacrifice where those close to a ruler are killed when the ruler dies,” Campbell explained. “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.”
Reconsidering the Evidence
While there were some circumstantial reasons to consider the human sacrifice theory, the lack of any obvious trauma on the remains left room for uncertainty. Intrigued by Petrie’s hypothesis, Campbell decided to re-examine the remains with modern forensic techniques to discern whether Petrie had missed anything.
Complicating the research effort, Petrie had reburied most of the remains, with only a handful of skulls sent on to Cambridge University for preservation. Among the 46 skulls that Campbell was able to locate at Cambridge today, she discovered evidence of violence in 18 of them. Comparing these to Petrie’s thorough notes, Campbell suggests that Petrie had misidentified signs of trauma as natural fractures.
“The injuries on the preserved crania are generally linear fractures, which would likely cause rapid unconsciousness, internal bleeding, and death,” said Campbell, who also reported evidence of sharp-force trauma on some of the 18 skulls, including a chopping injury to one individual’s eye.
In total, close to 39% of the skulls bore signs of trauma consistent with intentional killing upon reexamination.
Human Sacrifice Investigation
Exactly what occurred remains a mystery. The weapon typically shown in the hands of Egyptian kings was the mace, yet these injuries suggest something wider and flatter. Alternatively, the injuries could have resulted from a fall, but such an event should have left the other bones more visibly damaged, which Petrie did not record in his notes or photographs. The undamaged skulls add further mystery. Perhaps their other bones would reveal signs of trauma, or they were asphyxiated, or perhaps some even died of natural causes.
“If I had unlimited resources, I would love to figure out where the bodies of these individuals might be and analyze them!” said Campbell. “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.”
Although the work provides important evidence supporting Petrie’s century-old suspicions, more invasive work would be necessary to develop a deeper understanding of the exact circumstances that led to the deaths of these individuals long ago.
The paper, “New Data from Old Bones: Using Bioarchaeology and Forensics to Reassess Legacy Data from Ancient Abydos, Egypt,” appeared in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology on October 4, 2026.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.