It seems some Egyptian royal women really were warrior princesses.
Researchers examined five almost 4,000-year-old mummified princesses. Their results suggest these women were skilled users of the daggers, bows and other weapons buried with them. The findings appear in the July 16 Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.
“These princesses were active practitioners of hunting or athletic skills rather than merely symbolic owners of the weapons found in their tombs,” says Zeinab Hashesh. She’s a bioarchaeologist at Egypt’s Beni Suef University.
Some Egyptologists have dismissed the weapons found in females’ graves as “token” objects for the afterlife. However, the female mummies’ features showed they had performed intensive martial activities, Hashesh says.
The study examined six mummies that had been excavated in 1894 and 1895 from the Dahshur funerary complex. It’s about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Cairo. The mummies’ tombs had been carefully cataloged. Finds included im...
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