Researchers examined the remains of six royal individuals who lived during Egypt's Middle Kingdom nearly 4,000 years ago. After analyzing the muscle-attachment sites on these bones, the researchers suggested that certain pronounced areas might be linked to repeated activities such as archery and weapon handling.
The finding, published Friday (July 17) in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, challenges the assumption that weapons placed in the women's tombs were largely ceremonial. It may also provide new information about the health and physical activities of royal women.
In the 1890s, French archaeologist Jacques de Morgan excavated a site near the tomb of pharaohs Amenemhat II and Amenemhat III. From these excavations, de Morgan found various royal individuals, whose partial remains were later stored at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
The French archaeologist Jacques de Morgan found the royal burials in the 1890s. (Image credit: Gallica Digital Library via Wikimedia Commons)However, the skeletons' identities depend heavily on those 19th-century labels, which "means that we cannot be certain how reliable they really are," Sonia Zakrzewski, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Southampton in the U.K. who was not involved in the research, told Live Science in an email. Most of the individuals' skulls were missing, and only around 22% to 58% of each skeleton survived. Their soft tissues had largely decayed into powder, but the remaining bones allowed the team to estimate the sex and age and look for injuries, diseases and signs of physical activity.
Signs of weapons training?
Princess Ita, who died between the ages of 28 and 34, had pronounced attachment sites on parts of her right shoulder, arm and hand. The team suggested that these changes could reflect repeated gripping and weapon handling, possibly involving the ornate dagger found in her tomb.
Similarly, Princess Itaweret showed robust attachment sites around her shoulder and chest, while Khenmet had pronounced features on her arms and shoulders. King Hor also displayed differences between muscle attachments on the left and right sides of his body.
Despite the pronounced attachment sites on these individuals' bones, Zakrzewski said it's unknown if the royals got buff through archery or some other activity.
Zakrzewski added that it's unknown why artifacts like arrows were included in the tombs. Perhaps they were meant to be "used by individuals associated with the deceased," she said.
"Archery is a highly asymmetrical activity; finding generalized, bilateral robusticity in some bones (with some asymmetry observed in other bones) does not make a particularly strong case for these individuals practicing archery," he told Live Science via email.
An old photo of Dashur Pyramid, where the royal individuals were found. (Image credit: Rijksmuseum via Wikimedia Commons)
Princess versus pauper
One of the study's largest caveats was the absence of a comparative group, which would have shown how unusual the changes were compared with other Egyptians from the same period.
Besides missing a comparison with a "control" group, other experts believe that the researchers are reading too much into the weapons being buried with the royals.
Related stories"Although the presence of funerary artifacts (e.g., arrows, daggers) makes the princesses' involvement in such activities plausible, the authors provide limited biomechanical or biomedical evidence to substantiate this claim," Sébastien Villotte, an anthropologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, told Live Science via email.
Although the study has a number of uncertainties, Zakrzewski said they shouldn't diminish the value of examining the remains. "It allows us to sort of put flesh on the bones and understand more about their lives," she said.
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