Ancient Egyptian pyramids, thought to contain only the elite, may also hold low-class laborers

The pyramids of ancient Egypt and Sudan may not have been just for the rich, according to burials found at the archaeological site of Tombos in Sudan.

"Our findings suggest that pyramid tombs, once thought to be the final resting place of the most elite, may have also included low-status high-labor staff," archaeologists wrote in a paper published in the June issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. Ancient Egypt controlled parts of Sudan at times and Tombos was established as an Egyptian colony.

Tombos is located at the third cataract of the Nile River in Sudan. In ancient times, this area was known as Nubia or Kush. Following the Egyptians' takeover of the region around 1400 B.C., they established Tombos. "Shortly after the Egyptian conquest of Nubia, Tombos was constructed by the Egyptians in what was Nubian territory to facilitate colonial control," the team wrote in the study.

Wealthy individuals were buried in tombs with small pyramids atop them. In the new study, the scientists examined about 110 skeletons at Tombos. They analyzed where the muscles and ligaments (which had long since decayed) attached to the bone — a proxy that shows how much labor people did.

"As the body is used more frequently and more intensively, the muscles and ligaments require a stronger mode of attachment," the team wrote in the study. "This can result in distinct crests and ridges on the bone at the point of attachment."

These shifts in the bone are known as entheseal changes. The team reported that people who had a low rate of entheseal change were presumably high-status individuals who worked in bureaucracy and didn't do hard labor. But the tombs also held the remains of people who had a high rate of entheseal change and presumably did a large amount of hard labor.

Put another way, the pyramids weren't just for the rich; lower-class laborers were buried alongside the elite, the study authors proposed. Previously, it was believed that pyramids were built for elite members of society.

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The face-shaped lid of a ceramic coffin at Tombos.

This shabti was buried in the tomb of the scribe Tiy. Shabtis were thought to work for the deceased in the afterlife.

This finding suggests that "social classes were not segregated, but instead that a hard laboring non-elite were buried alongside an elite who avoided tasks that led to entheseal wear," the team wrote in the study. "We can no longer assume that individuals buried in grandiose [pyramid] tombs are the elite. Indeed, the hardest working members of the communities are associated with the most visible monuments."

There are a few possible explanations for why non-elite individuals were buried in the pyramid tombs, said study first author Sarah Schrader, an associate professor of archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

"This practice may have been encouraged by elite individuals in order to reinforce a hierarchical social order," Schrader told Live Science in an email. "It could've also been that people of lower social economic status may have wanted to be buried next to people of higher economic status."

Study co-author Stuart Tyson Smith, an anthropology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Live Science in an email that "our thinking is that elites surrounded themselves with the non-elites who worked in some capacity for them, effectively replicating the social order with burials in and around their funerary monuments." Less affluent people "may have hoped to benefit from associations with their employers in terms of status, magical protections, and the funerary cult," Smith said.

Although the work focused only on Sudan, Schrader said it's possible that elite and non-elite individuals were also buried together in pyramid tombs in Egypt, although more research needs to be done to figure that out.

Responses to the findings were mixed. Julia Budka, a professor of Egyptian archaeology and art history at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, praised the study, telling Live Science in an email that "all in all, this is a great study that will have an impact on future interpretations of new and old excavations and data."

However, Aidan Dodson, an Egyptology professor at the University of Bristol in the U.K., said we should approach these findings cautiously. He noted that members of the elite also may have engaged in tasks that involved hard labor, so those with bulked-up muscles may have actually belonged to the upper class.

"The fact that Tombos was a colonial outpost might particularly mean that the elite had military and physical training," Dodson told Live Science in an email.

It is important to note that the pyramids at Tombos are different from those at Giza or Saqqara, noted Wolfram Grajetzki, an Egyptologist and honorary senior research fellow at University College London. The pyramids at those sites were built for pharaohs and their queens whereas the pyramids at Tombos were built for nonroyal individuals.

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