3,000-year-old severed hands found buried in pharaoh’s courtyard, archaeologists say

All kinds of ancient artifacts — including mummies, statues and amulets — have been unearthed by archaeologists in the Egyptian desert, a region rife with treasures of antiquity.

One of the stranger discoveries was made in 2011 when 12 severed hands were found buried in pits at an ancient Egyptian palace, sparking questions about their origins.

Now, after careful examination of the bones, researchers have determined where they likely came from and why they were buried, according to a study published on March 31 in the journal Nature.

The hands were found beneath a palace courtyard in Tell el-Dab’a, a onetime capital city in the Nile River delta, according to researchers affiliated with German and Austrian organizations.

The palace dates to around 1500 BC and was occupied by a 15th Dynasty pharaoh.

Osteological analysis revealed that the remains are all right hands, and all but one belonged to men.

They also appear to have been severed in a precise manner, which ensured no parts of the lower arm remained, researchers said.

Once removed, the hands were set down in the pits with the fingers spread far apart.

It’s not clear if the hands were amputated from living or deceased people, but researchers suggest that they were lopped off the arms of dead warriors as part of a practice known as trophy taking.

The practice appears to have been brought to Egypt by the Hyksos people, a group of West Asians who ruled the Nile River delta, researchers said.

The custom involved presenting the detached right hands of enemies to the pharaoh. In exchange they would be gifted the “gold of honor,” a neckband made from gold beads.

“The severed hands served as symbolic currency for status acquisition, within a system of values celebrating warfare and dominance,” researchers wrote.

The gruesome tradition “conveys a message of political stability: the pharaoh, representation and personification of the gods, maintains the universal order by defeating the forces of chaos, personified by the enemies.”

The fact that the hands were buried in the palace courtyard, right next to the throne room, indicates the interment would have been a highly visible ceremony meant to display the pharaoh’s dominance, researchers said.

The “gold of honor” ritual had previously been described in tomb and temple inscriptions, but this discovery is the first physical evidence that the practice was actually carried out, researchers said.

This story was originally published April 3, 2023 at 5:14 PM with the headline "3,000-year-old severed hands found buried in pharaoh’s courtyard, archaeologists say."