The dagger buried with Princess Ita. Credit: Sameh Abdel Mohsen
For decades, scientists have disputed the meaning of the weapons found in the burial chambers of some ancient Egyptian princesses. Were they symbolic or practical tools? Now, a reassessment of five royal women's mummies from the Middle Kingdom has shown that some princesses buried with weapons could use them.
"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 article in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. "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."
Rediscovered skeletons
The researchers studied six royal mummies found at Dahshur, a funerary complex of pyramids and shaft tombs, in the 1890s. These mummies had been lost for years and were rediscovered in the Egyptian Museum during a curation project in 2020.
