---
title: "Skulls from Egypt’s First Dynasty royal tombs back the sacrifice theory; 18 of 46 show fatal injuries"
url: https://badiyaa.com/abydos-first-dynasty-skulls-retainer-sacrifice/
published: 2026-11-14T11:28:00+00:00
modified: 2026-11-14T11:28:00+00:00
section: Science
publisher: Badiyaa
---

# Skulls from Egypt’s First Dynasty royal tombs back the sacrifice theory; 18 of 46 show fatal injuries

A new study of 46 skulls from Egypt's First Dynasty royal tombs at Abydos finds 18 with fatal injuries, backing the idea of retainer sacrifice.

Eighteen of 46 skulls taken from the graves that ring Egypt’s earliest royal tombs carry injuries consistent with fatal blows struck around the time of death, a new study reports. That is 39 percent, and it gives fresh physical support to a century-old suspicion that members of the royal household were killed when their king died.

The work comes from bioarchaeologist Roselyn Campbell of Purdue University in Indiana, published on October 5, 2026, in [Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology](https://doi.org/10.3389/fearc.2026.1858940) under the title “New data from old bones.”

## Hundreds of graves around Egypt’s first kings

The skulls come from Umm el-Qaab, the royal cemetery at Abydos in southern Egypt, where the First Dynasty rulers who governed a newly unified country were buried roughly 5,000 years ago. The paper dates the dynasty to about 3078 to 2900 BCE.

Around each king’s tomb and nearby ritual enclosure sit rows of smaller single graves, sometimes hundreds of them. The paper describes the people inside as court officials and craftspeople. Some graves held fine objects, including ivory combs carrying the king’s name, copper tools and flint knives, and a few had small stone markers listing a name and title.

Aha, the first ruler of the dynasty, had only a few of these graves. His successors had hundreds, and the practice faded quickly once the Second Dynasty began. The [Umm El Qa’ab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umm_El_Qa%27ab) entry notes that the tomb of King Djer alone is associated with 338 such burials.

## How one researcher re-examined 46 skulls

The excavator Flinders Petrie dug these graves in the early 20th century and suspected that so many people could not all have died naturally at once. But he reported no signs of violent injury, which left the idea of retainer sacrifice open to doubt for decades. Retainer sacrifice means killing a ruler’s servants or officials so they could accompany the ruler in death.

Petrie reburied most of the bodies but kept many skulls. Campbell studied the 46 that survive in the Duckworth Collection at Cambridge University in England, taken from the graves around the enclosures of Djer, Djet and Merneith.

Most of the injuries she found are linear fractures across the top of the skull. In forensic work, that pattern usually points to a wide, flat surface striking the head with relatively low force, rather than a club or mace, which tends to leave a dent. A few skulls also showed injuries from a sharp edge.

One detail suggests Petrie saw the damage without understanding it. Paraffin wax had been brushed onto many cracked skulls to hold them together, often right around the fractures. Campbell argues he noticed the breaks but read them as damage from the burial soil rather than injuries at death.

To put the numbers side by side: Djer’s tomb alone is linked to 338 graves, while this study rests on 46 surviving skulls, so it samples only a small slice of the people buried at the site.

## What the 39 percent does not tell us

The evidence has clear limits. It is one researcher’s analysis of skulls only, because the rest of the skeletons were reburied a century ago. The other 28 individuals may have died naturally, or in ways that leave no mark on the skull. Petrie-era records cannot settle how the injuries were made, and the paper does not claim a single method.

Campbell writes that Petrie’s original idea “may be correct,” but that the burial rites around these kings were likely “more nuanced and varied than we might have expected.”

Badiyaa has covered other old collections that yielded new answers, including [two Bronze Age pieces in Spain’s Treasure of Villena made from meteorite iron](https://badiyaa.com/treasure-villena-meteoritic-iron-bronze-age/). More archaeology stories are on our [Science page](https://badiyaa.com/category/science/).

The full raw data has not yet been released. The paper says it is being prepared for a separate publication, and Campbell has a book on state violence and human sacrifice in early Egypt in the works.

## Further reading

- [Wikipedia: Umm El Qa'ab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umm_El_Qa%27ab)

- [Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology (2026): New data from old bones](https://doi.org/10.3389/fearc.2026.1858940)

*Image: isawnyu, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons*

*This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*