Did These Ancient Egyptian Princesses Wield Weapons and Train in Martial Arts, Just Like the Men of Their Time?
A new analysis of their bones suggests they were buried alongside arrows, maces and daggers because they had repeatedly used those weapons in life
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In the 1890s, mummified remains were discovered of several ancient Egyptian princesses who’d been buried alongside weapons typically associated with men, including arrows, maces and daggers. But whether the women had used the weapons or they were merely symbolic tokens remained an open question.
Now, after taking a closer look at the mummies’ bones, scientists argue the royal women likely wielded the weapons themselves. The findings suggest the princesses engaged in “intensive, skilled martial or ritualized activity,” scientists report in a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.
“[The women] carried their bows and daggers into the afterlife not just as ornaments, but as testaments to the active, resilient and powerful lives they led,” lead author Zeinab Hashesh, an archaeologist at Beni-Suef University, tells NewScientist’s Chris Simms.
The six royal mummies were initially unearthed during French archaeologist Jacques de Morgan’s 1894-95 excavations of the Dahshur complex, a group of pyramids and tombs about 25 miles south of Cairo dating to between 1850 and 1700 B.C.E. The individuals were identified as King Hor, Princess Noub-Hotep, Princess Ita, Princess Khenmet, Princess Itaweret and an unknown woman suspected to be Princess Sathathormeryt.
King Hor was a 13th Dynasty pharaoh, reports ScienceNews’ Tom Metcalfe, while Princesses Ita, Khenmet, Itaweret and Sathathormeryt were daughters of a 12th Dynasty pharaoh called Amenemhat II. Princess Noub-Hotep wasn’t one of the sisters, but she was likely related to the others. Researchers discovered rare spinal and developmental anomalies in the mummies that suggest a “shared hereditary lineage,” they write in the paper.
At the time, researchers performed initial examinations of the bodies of King Hor and Princess Noub-Hotep but not the others. All six mummies ended up in the basement of the Egyptian Museum, where they went unexamined for more than a century.
The mummies resurfaced in 2020. When archaeologists found the remains after so long, researchers felt “a sense of responsibility to finally tell their human story,” Hashesh tells National Geographic’s Andrew Chapman.
Did you know? Bones tell the story
Our bones are not fixed structures but, rather, living tissues that adapt to stress. Repeatedly using the same muscles, such as during exercise or manual labor, can lead to changes in the bones, especially in places where muscles attach.
When researchers examined the individuals’ bones, they found physiological evidence suggesting they were active users of the weapons they were buried with millennia ago.
Princess Ita, for example, appears to have had strong hand muscles, perhaps built up from years of gripping weapons like daggers and maces, according to the researchers. Princesses Noub-Hotep and Itaweret, meanwhile, both had thickened forearm bones, which could have resulted from repeatedly drawing and stabilizing a bow. The bones in Princess Noub-Hotep’s right hand also showed signs of “archer’s grip,” Hashesh tells NewScientist, which suggests she “must have begun training in archery and martial arts from a young age.”
Beyond these skeletal changes associated with repetitive muscle use, the bones also showed signs of injury, which the researchers think were caused by high-impact activities like hunting or military training. But the fractures were well-healed, probably because the royals had access to “advanced medical care for their time,” Hashesh says in a statement.
Overall, the findings suggest the princesses “were not leading sedentary lives of luxury,” Hashesh tells ScienceNews. “They were well-conditioned athletes whose bodies were hardened by the same skilled force and disciplined movement as the men of their time.”
Michelle Langley, an archaeologist at Griffith University who was not involved with the research, agrees that the royal women were probably not “sitting around a palace or following their menfolk around, but living active and skilled lives.”
“They were trained in very practical martial and hunting arts, just as we imagine their fathers and brothers were,” she tells NewScientist.
However, not everyone agrees with the scientists’ interpretation. Other outside experts who were not involved with the study argue that the skeletal changes could have been caused by other activities that had nothing to do with the weapons.
“If we were to find a tennis player buried with a club, we cannot simply argue that this [similar] bony change was a result of clubbing people,” Sonia Zakrzewski, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Southampton, tells NewScientist.
Wolfram Grajetzki, an Egyptologist at University College London, is similarly skeptical, telling National Geographic that because “weapons were found in these tombs, [the researchers] see a connection.”
Sébastien Villotte, an anthropologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, tells Live Science’s Kenna Hughes-Castleberry in an email the study would have been more convincing if it had included a comparison between the royal skeletons and those of non-elite individuals.
“This would help determine whether such degenerative changes (at these locations) were common in the general population (who were unlikely to engage in the same activities) or truly indicative of elite-specific behaviors,” he adds.
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