In the 1920s, Egyptologist Flinders Petrie theorized that numerous ancient Egyptian burials in Abydos represented human sacrifices. Around 100 years later, another Egyptologist has found evidence that he was likely right.

Roselyn Campbell, an Egyptologist and bioarchaeologist at Purdue University, studied dozens of ancient Egyptian skulls that Petrie had excavated. The previously overlooked injuries she identified on the skulls strongly suggest that many early burials in Abydos belong to members of the royal household who had been sacrificed in the wake of a king’s death, also known as retainers.

“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,” Campbell, sole author of a study published today in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, said in a Frontiers statement. “Who were these people and how did they view the ruler and their own role in his or her life and death?”

The first kings of a unified Egypt constructed funerary complexes at Abydos—today a hugely important ancient Egyptian archaeological site—around 3,000 BCE. The complexes included the royal tombs, chamber tombs and enclosures likely employed for funerary rituals, and surrounding subsidiary burials. A subsidiary burial consisted of a simple chamber, and some of the people buried in one had a simple coffin. Most had been laid to rest with a small number of burial objects, Campbell explained.

Petrie also found some grave markers with official titles, which appear to mostly indicate artisans and mid- or lower-level officials.

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