Inscriptions and reliefs from Egyptian tombs and temples depict mutilated or amputated hands during the New Kingdom from the 16th to 11th centuries BC. According to the authors of the new study, archaeologists have found and analyzed real amputated hands for the first time.

what is known

They belonged to at least eleven men and possibly one woman, which may indicate that women and war are not worlds apart.
– write the authors of the study.

The team based their analysis on what they described as right hands found in 2011 buried in three separate pits in the courtyard of the Hyksos palace at Awaris/Tell el-Dab’a in northeastern Egypt.

The palace dates back to the 15th Dynasty (1640-1530 BC), when Hyksos kings ruled Lower and Middle Egypt all the way to the city of Kusei, known today as El Kuseya.

According to the research team, severed hands found in the pits the presence of at least 12 adults, but several missing hands and fingers means there can be up to 18 hands in total.

Eleven right hands found in two pits, L1542 and L1543 / Photo: Gresky

The team first looked at taponomic causes special arrangement of severed hands. Taphonomy is the study of bodies and body parts after death, assessing the processes of preservation, decomposition and fossilization. While it’s not unusual for body parts to be separated from each other over time, separated by flooding or soil movement, or gradually worn and eroded, researchers believe: severed hands may have been deliberately severed.

After removing all attached parts of the forearm, the hands are placed on the ground with the fingers wide, mostly on the palm side,
– says work.

The proximal rows of carpal bones, the set of 8 small carpal bones that connect the hands to the forearms, were found to be intact in 6 of the 12 examined hands. Fragments of the forearm bone were not found, leading researchers to believe it was deliberately cut by cutting the joint capsule of the hands and then cutting the tendons that run through the wrist.

Hand with widely spread fingers / Photo: Gresky

Scientists say that the people responsible for this ceremony cared about the neat appearance of the hands and therefore amputated according to a certain procedure, regardless of whether the victim later survived. Some indications suggest that the hands were buried either before embalming began or shortly after it had passed.

Therefore, the scientists concluded that the humans were probably dismembered during or shortly before the awards ceremony, and that the hands were placed in the pit after the morgue took place.

The pits in which the hands were buried were located in the large courtyard of the palace, in front of the throne room. According to the team, the fact that they’re placed in such a prominent place in the public eye demonstrates how common this “reward-taking” practice is. There is also speculation that cutting hands could be some form of punishment for breaking the law.

Location of Pit L1777 / Photo: Gresky

Evidence of inscriptions and severed hands on Ahmose’s tomb / Photograph: William Vivian Davies/Oxford/CC-BY-SA