TOMBOS, SUDAN—Over the course of 3,000 years, ancient Egyptians built more than 100 pyramids that remain perhaps the most recognizable and enduring symbols of Egyptian civilization. These monumental structures were exclusively the final resting places of royalty, nobility, and the wealthy—or so it was thought. BBC Science Focus reports that the long-standing view that these funerary complexes were only reserved for the elite has been upended. Recently, a Dutch-American team at the site of the Egyptian colony of Tombos in Nubia, present-day Sudan, has unearthed several skeletons buried within pyramids dating to between 1400 and 650 b.c. The researchers were surprised to notice that the bones of some individuals showed signs of wear and tear that were likely caused by a lifetime of hard manual labor. Others, as was expected, did not. This has led the team to conclude that pyramid burials in Tombos were more inclusive than previously thought and that the deceased lying within these tombs came from both the upper and lower classes. "This could potentially shake up what we know about the pyramids,” said Leiden University researcher Sarah Schrader. “In the past, we've just assumed that the people who were buried in there were the elite, because we know that the pyramids were designed for elite people. That still holds true, but maybe there were others being buried in the pyramids as well." Read the original scholarly article about this research in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. For more on Nubian archaeology, go to "A Nubian Kingdom Rises."
