Bones of Ancient Egyptian Princesses Show They Used the Weapons in Their Tombs

A new examination of royal mummies from Egypt's Middle Kingdom suggests that at least some ancient Egyptian princesses buried with weapons had been physically trained to use them, rather than receiving the bows, arrows, daggers and maces as purely ceremonial objects, according to a study in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.

The research focused on six royal mummies originally uncovered in the 1890s at Dahshur, an Egyptian burial complex with pyramids and shaft tombs. The remains disappeared from scholarly attention for years before being identified again at the Egyptian Museum during a curation project in 2020. Four of the six were sisters and daughters of the pharaoh Amenemhat II, placed in matching underground burial chambers; the other two were Princess Noub-Hotep and King Hor.

"Members of the royal family, especially the women, were active participants in skilled, physically demanding activities such as archery and hunting," said Dr. Zeinab Hashesh, lead author of the study. "This conclusion is supported by the way their bones developed to sustain heavy muscle use, which corresponds directly to the weapons discovered in their tombs."

Princess Ita, who died between the ages of 28 and 34, had strong upper-body muscle attachments suggesting she habitually used weapons such as maces or daggers, and her coffin held an especially ornate dagger. Princess Itaweret, who died between 20 and 34, survived broken ribs and foot fractures and had a skeleton showing she was a skilled archer. Comparable skeletal evidence suggested Princess Noub-Hotep and King Hor also practiced archery.

All six mummies had deteriorated soft tissue, and portions of their skeletons, including the princesses' skulls, had gone missing since the early 1900s. Even so, enough skeletal material survived for researchers to estimate each individual's age at death, height, sex and evidence of past injuries and illnesses.