Severed hands found in northern Egypt are proof of gruesome war practice, study says

The right hands of 11 men and one woman date back to the Hyksos period beginning in 1650 BC

One of 12 severed hands discovered by archaeologists in northern Egypt. Photo: Nature

Twelve severed hands found at an archaeological site in northern Egypt are the first physical evidence of a gruesome war practice involving the public dismemberment of defeated enemies, a study has found.

Known as the “gold of honour” ceremony, the practice has been seen depicted only on tomb inscriptions from about 1650 BC onwards, when Egypt’s northern kingdom was ruled for a century by a foreign Levantine people known as the Hyksos.

To win the ruler’s favour, soldiers returning from battle would bring the severed right hands of their enemies to the royal court in return for “gold of honour”, said Dr Julia Gresky, an anthropologist and osteologist who studied the hands and co-authored a study on them published in the scientific journal Nature.

A German archaeological mission unearthed the hands in 2011 in a palace courtyard at Tell El Dab’a, an archaeological site in the Nile Delta where the ancient city of Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos dynasty, once stood.

The 12 hands, which were all right hands, were found near the palace’s throne room, which points to their use in some kind of royal ceremony, according to the study.

“We can’t know everything about the owners of these hands, like where they are from or whether they were alive or dead when the hands were taken, but by taking some measurements we were able to tell that they were 11 males and one female,” Ms Gresky said.

Eleven of the hands were large and robust, which the researchers took as a sign that they were from men, while the other one was much smaller. The study explains that a person’s sex can also be determined from the relative size the index and ring fingers. Males typically have longer ring fingers than index fingers, and the opposite is true for females.

Anthropological reconstruction of the find and details of the right hands found at a Hyksos-era palace in northern Egypt. Photo: Nature

“The hands were mainly studied visually. X-rays weren’t needed as we could identify the bones easily without them," Ms Gresky told The National.

“We would have usually extracted all the bones of the hand and studied them, but in this case the find is so special, we kept them in a protective cast and studied them there.”

Each hand had been cleanly severed from its arm, Ms Gresky found, with no obvious cut marks on any of the bones. This suggests that specific care was taken for a ceremonial presentation, most likely to the pharaoh as war trophies.

“Mutilating people without regard to their survival is often done by severing the arm at any anatomical position. This method is faster and easier, but it leaves a section of the lower arm attached to the hand,” the study said.

“If this was the case with these hands, the people offering them, or those in charge of the ceremony, cared enough about their proper presentation to detach parts of the lower arm.”

Due to their superficial placement in the ground which resulted in erosion, the hands were found in various states of preservation. In addition to the 12 hands, eleven bits of fingers belonging to some of the same individuals were found.

Six digits were found which did not belong to any of the other discovered limbs, suggesting that hands belonging to 18 different individuals may have been buried in the courtyard.

The researchers also determined that all the hands’ owners were adults but not elderly. This supports the hypothesis that the hands were trophies of war which means they would have been taken from foes of fighting age.

Noting that one of the hands probably belonged to a woman, Ms Gresky explained that this was in keeping with the hypothesis as female warriors were not unheard of in ancient Egypt.

“Women and warfare did not exist in separate worlds. On the contrary, they were inextricably linked to the political, social and religious spheres. Consequently, we cannot exclude that the specific hand attested at Tell El Dab’a belonged to a woman,” she wrote in the study.

An inscription containing an outstretched palm with fingers spread found on the tomb of Ahmose at El Kab is considered iconographic evidence of the practice of severing hands. Photo: Nature

Cutting off of hands was not a common punishment in ancient Egypt, except for particularly egregious crimes like robbing pharaohs' tombs, which made the study's authors rule out the possibility that the hands found at Tell El Dab’a were taken from criminals.

It was also unlikely that they were taken from slaves as this would have limited their ability to work, the study said.