Archaeologists have long assumed that ancient Egyptian pyramids were reserved for the richest members of society – but an analysis of burials at a site called Tombos suggests low-status workers could merit a place in pyramid tombs too.
Tombos, an archaeological site in northern Sudan, came under ancient Egyptian control about 3500 years ago when the famous civilisation was at its most powerful. By this time, Egyptian royalty no longer favoured pyramid burials. But Egyptian nobles were still keen on them, and the ruined remains of have been found at Tombos.
at Leiden University, the Netherlands, has been working at the site for more than a decade. In particular, she has been determining by analysing subtle marks on their bones where muscles, tendons and ligaments were once attached. When she and her colleagues examined the numerous skeletons associated with each pyramid tomb, they made an unexpected discovery: some of the remains belonged to people who had done very little physical activity during their lives, and others belonged to people who had been extremely active.
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“At first we didn’t quite understand what the data meant,” says Schrader. Her colleague, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, came up with an explanation: the low-activity individuals must have been nobles who lived in luxury – and the active individuals must have been hard-working non-elites. This challenges a long-standing assumption in Egyptology that monumental tombs were exclusively reserved for nobles.
“I think we have assumed for far too long that pyramids were just for the rich,” says Schrader.
Alternative explanations are possible, says at the University of Bristol, UK, who wasn’t involved in the analysis. For example, the high-activity individuals may have been nobles who chose to keep in good physical shape to reinforce their status.
But Schrader isn’t convinced. She and her colleagues point out in their study that plenty of archaeological evidence from elsewhere indicates that ancient Egyptian elites had strictly different activity patterns from non-elites.
It’s also unlikely, says Schrader, that there is a sinister explanation for the co-occurrence of nobles and workers in the same tomb. “[Human] sacrifice had occurred in the region about 500 years prior,” she says – but by the time Tombos was under ancient Egyptian control “there’s really no evidence for it”.
Her team speculates that the non-elites may have been servants who were buried in the pyramids so they could continue to serve their masters in the afterlife. That’s a surprising conclusion: although ancient Egyptians believed they needed servants in the afterlife, most of them thought they could get the assistance they needed from small figurines – called – that were placed in the tomb. Perhaps some nobles chose to also have their real servants buried nearby as a contingency – although at the moment, we don’t know for sure. “A lot of explanations are possible,” says Schrader.
The work also raises questions over whether these mixed-status burials are unique to Tombos. at University College London, who wasn’t involved in the study, thinks it might reflect a wider pattern that could be observed at other ancient Egyptian sites. “There is some evidence from other places that high officials were buried close to servants,” he says.
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
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