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More than 4,000 years ago in Egypt, dozens of men who died of terrible wounds were mummified and entombed together in the cliffs near Luxor. Mass burials were exceptionally rare in ancient Egypt — so why did all these mummies end up in the same place?
Recently, archaeologists visited the mysterious Tomb of the Warriors in Deir el Bahari, Egypt; the tomb had been sealed after its discovery in 1923. After analyzing evidence from the tomb and other sites in Egypt, they pieced together the story of a desperate and bloody chapter in Egypt's history at the close of the Old Kingdom, around 2150 B.C.
Archaeologist Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, investigated the mummies with a camera crew in late September 2018, with the cooperation of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and the assistance of local experts, Davina Bristow, documentary producer and director, told Live Science.
From the tomb's entrance, a maze of tunnels branched out about 200 feet (61 meters) into the cliff; chambers were filled with mummified body parts and piles of bandages that had once been wrapped around the corpses but had come unraveled, Ikram discovered.
The bodies all seemed to belong to men, and many showed signs of severe trauma. Skulls were broken or pierced — probably the result of projectiles or weapons — and arrows were embedded in many of the bodies, suggesting the men were soldiers who died in battle. One of the mummies was even wearing a protective gauntlet on its arm, such as those worn by archers, according to Ikram.
Archaeologist Salima Ikram examines an image of a skull from the mass burial.
(Image credit: Patrick Acum)
"These people have died bloody, fearsome deaths," Ikram said.
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Some of those clues lay in the tomb of the pharaoh Pepi II, whose 90-year reign had just ended, Philippe Collombert, an Egyptologist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, told Live Science in an email.
Pepi II's burial tomb in Saqqara, Egypt, was ornate and spectacular; it was built during his youth, which suggests that the kingdom at that time was secure with no signs of civil collapse, Collombert said.
However, Pepi II's tomb was looted soon after he was buried. Such a profoundly sacrilegious act could only have taken place if Egyptians had already begun to reject the godlike stature of the pharaoh, and if the central government was no longer in control, Collombert explained.
Hieroglyphs in Pepi II's pyramid in Saqarra, Egypt contain ritual text for the pharaoh's rebirth in the afterlife.
(Image credit: Patrick Acum)
As Pepi II's influence waned toward the end of his rule and local governors became more and more powerful, their burial chambers became bigger and more lavish. One governor's tomb, built in the Qubbet el Hawa necropolis after Pepi II's death, contained inscriptions that hinted at the conflict emerging between political factions, describing social disruption, civil war and lack of control by a single administration, Antonio Morales, an Egyptologist at the University of Alcalá in Madrid, Spain, said in the documentary.
And famine caused by drought may have accelerated this social collapse, according to Morales. Another inscription in the governor's tomb noted that "the southern country is dying of hunger so every man was eating his own children" and "the whole country has become like a starving locust," Morales said.
Together, starvation and unrest could have laid the groundwork for a frenzied battle that left 60 men dead on the ground — and then mummified in the same tomb, Ikram said.
"Secrets of the Dead: Egypt's Darkest Hour" aired last night (April 3) on PBS and is now available to stream on the PBS website and on PBS apps.
Mindy Weisberger is a science journalist and author of "Rise of the Zombie Bugs: The Surprising Science of Parasitic Mind-Control" (Hopkins Press). She formerly edited for Scholastic and was a channel editor and senior writer for Live Science. She has reported on general science, covering climate change, paleontology, biology and space. Mindy studied film at Columbia University; prior to LS, she produced, wrote and directed media for the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. Her videos about dinosaurs, astrophysics, biodiversity and evolution appear in museums and science centers worldwide, earning awards such as the CINE Golden Eagle and the Communicator Award of Excellence. Her writing has also appeared in Scientific American, The Washington Post, How It Works Magazine and CNN.
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