---
title: "Five Thousand Years Later, the Skulls Still Show Where the Blows Landed"
description: "A re-examination of remains from an ancient Egyptian burial ground finds fractures consistent with deliberate killing"
author: "Nate Ledger"
published: 2026-10-05T04:00:52Z
modified: 2026-10-05T09:11:53Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/five-thousand-years-later-the-skulls-still-show-where-the-bl-d07c4f
language: en
tags: ["archaeology", "egypt", "forensics", "mummies", "petrie", "science"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Five Thousand Years Later, the Skulls Still Show Where the Blows Landed

*A re-examination of remains from an ancient Egyptian burial ground finds fractures consistent with deliberate killing*

By Nate Ledger · October 5, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/five-thousand-years-later-the-skulls-still-show-where-the-bl-d07c4f

## In brief

- Campbell re-examined 46 crania excavated by Petrie at Abydos in the 1920s and now held at Cambridge University
- 18 of the skulls, about 39%, show linear fractures indicating blunt-force trauma likely to have caused death
- Some skulls show sharp-force trauma; other theories for the rest include asphyxiation, strangulation or poisoning
- A flat, light weapon such as a wooden club is the likeliest cause; a mace would have left depressed fractures

The question of whether ancient Egypt’s earliest rulers took their servants with them when they died has been debated for more than a century. The burial complexes at Abydos, in southern Egypt, contained hundreds of subsidiary graves holding officials, artisans and royal household staff. “Retainer sacrifice is a type of human sacrifice where those close to a ruler are killed when the ruler dies,” archaeologist Roselyn Campbell told [The National](https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/uk/2026/10/05/modern-forensic-science-uncovers-human-sacrifice-in-ancient-egypt). What has been missing, until now, is clear evidence on the bodies of how those people actually died. Campbell’s new forensic work, reported by [Ars Technica](https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/10/new-forensice-evidence-supports-egyptian-retainer-sacrifice), offers an answer, and it is a blunt one.

The remains in question are 46 crania excavated by the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie in the 1920s from the Umm el-Qaab cemetery at Abydos — a royal necropolis where many of the early pharaohs were buried — and now stored at Cambridge University. The burial complexes date to around 3000 BC. Campbell re-examined the skulls to establish age, sex, health and, critically, cause of death. Her findings on biological sex largely matched Petrie’s own assessments, though she cautions that skulls alone cannot settle the question conclusively; you need the pelvic bones for that, and matching those bones to the right crania would be extremely difficult even if the re-excavation were possible.

The striking finding was in the fractures. Eighteen of the 46 skulls — about 39% — showed linear fractures consistent with blunt-force trauma. Blows of that kind would have knocked the victims unconscious, caused internal bleeding and probably killed them, Campbell found. Some skulls also bore signs of sharp-force trauma, including evidence of a chopping wound to one skull’s eye. For the individuals whose skulls show no such damage, scholars have previously suggested asphyxiation, strangulation or poisoning. Not everyone in those graves, it seems, died the same way, but a great many of them did not die naturally.

Petrie himself recorded no evidence of fatal trauma on the remains, and Campbell is careful to defend him rather than gloat over a century-old mistake. The defence is worth hearing, because it explains how evidence can sit in a museum drawer for a hundred years without anyone reading it:

> I don’t think he missed them because he was a pretty careful observer. 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.

The problem, she explained, is that a crack looks like a crack. Forensic researchers have spent decades learning how bone behaves — how dry bone, fresh bone and bone of different ages respond to different forces. A skull that is 100 years old breaks differently from one that is 1,000 years old, or six days old. Without that knowledge, an excavator who sees a fracture will reasonably conclude it happened during the dig. “That’s not uncommon, unfortunately,” she said.

There is also a quiet piece of detective work about the weapon. Egyptian art is full of rulers smiting their enemies with maces, and a mace would seem like the obvious suspect. But a mace blow leaves a depressed fracture — the bone is driven inward — and these fractures are linear. Whatever was used was flatter, wider and lighter. Campbell is realistic about how far the reconstruction can go: “It could be as simple as a board.” Petrie had suggested a sandbag; she notes that sandbags are very heavy, and swinging one with enough force might well have left more damage than the skulls show. A simple wooden club fits better. “People use makeshift weapons all the time,” she observed.

None of this settles every argument about retainer sacrifice in ancient Egypt, and Campbell does not claim it does. But the marks were there all along, on skulls handled and catalogued by one of archaeology’s most careful men. What changed was not the evidence. It was that the field finally learned to read it.