Egyptologists find evidence of spear-wound sentences Traci Watson
An ancient wall carving spells out the bloody punishment for stealing animal hides: 100 lashes and five wounds. Egyptologists have long wondered whether that was a literal description.
Now skeletons showing evidence of that sentence have been found in a humble cemetery in the ancient Egyptian capital of Amarna.
Five middle-aged men buried in Amarna’s cemetery for commoners seem to have been stabbed in the shoulder blade by a spear, scientists report in the International Journal of Paleopathology.
The misdeeds and names of the five men are unknown. But the researchers do know that many people with such injuries can quickly get back go work — a benefit to bosses in a city employing legions of laborers in stone-finishing workshops and quarries.
Starting nearly a decade ago, Dabbs and her colleagues noticed that some of the bodies had a mysterious slot-shaped gash in the bone of the shoulder blade. The gashes had been inflicted from an assailant standing behind the victim, making them unlikely to be battle wounds. Accidental falls couldn’t explain the injuries either.
But the gashes turned out to be a good fit for a punishment described in the ancient texts. One ancient Egyptian fable tells of a thief who steals an ox and is punished with 100 blows and five wounds. Ancient Egyptian tax dodgers were beaten while lying facedown on the ground, just as those in the Amarna cemetery were stabbed from behind.
The researchers make “a pretty solid case here,” says bioarchaeol-ogist Brenda Baker of Arizona State University, who has worked on ancient Egyptian skeletons. She says the study’s explanation makes sense. The ancient Egyptians “didn’t have jails the way we do today, so public lashing of this sort was probably prescribed.”