New forensic evidence supports Egyptian "retainer sacrifice"

Campbell re-examined the 46 crania to ascertain age and sex, as well as clues about their health and how the individuals may have died. Her findings with regard to biological sex were largely consistent with Petrie’s, although Campbell cautions that it’s difficult to make a conclusive finding based only on the skulls; one would need the pelvic bones to be sure. Even if she had the funds and the time to re-excavate those remains, it would be extremely difficult to match the bones to their respective crania.

Most interesting was the presence of linear fractures in 18 of the skulls (about 39 percent), suggesting blunt force trauma. Such fractures would have knocked the individuals unconscious, causing internal bleeding and likely death, per Campbell. Some of the skulls also showed signs of sharp-force trauma, including signs of chopping to one of the skull’s eyes. As for how the others might have died, scholars have suggested asphyxiation, strangulation, or poisoning.

Petrie didn’t note any evidence of fatal trauma on the remains, but the field has advanced considerably over the last century. “I don’t think he missed them because he was a pretty careful observer,” said Campbell. “He just didn’t know what he was looking at. It’s only in the past few decades that we’ve gotten a much clearer understanding of how to differentiate the timing of an injury. A lot of that is studying how dry bone, fresh bone, bone that is exposed to different types of forces will react to different types of insults. If you don’t know that a bone is going to break differently if it’s 100 years old versus 1,000 years old versus 6 days old, you would see a crack and go, ‘Oh, well, it probably happened during excavation.’ That’s not uncommon, unfortunately.”

While Egyptian rulers are often shown smiting enemies with a mace, such a weapon would have caused depressed fractures, not the lineaer variety observed here, so it is more likely to have been a flat, wide, lighter weapon of some kind. “It’s really hard to say specifically,” said Campbell. “It could be as simple as a board. Petrie thought it could have been a sandbag. Honestly, sandbags are very heavy, and I think the force required to swing a large sandbag might’ve caused more damage, but you could easily fashion some kind of wooden club. People use makeshift weapons all the time.”