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Editor’s Note: This article contains images of human skeletal remains.
In a land known for its mummies and legends of cursed tombs, perhaps one of Egypt’s most macabre finds was the 2011 discovery of at least a dozen severed right hands at the site of Tell el-Dab‘a (ancient Avaris). It is the only such find ever recorded from ancient Egypt.1
Avaris in the eastern Nile Delta was the Egyptian capital of the Hyksos, who arose from among the local population of West Asian immigrants and ruled Egypt as the 15th Dynasty (c. 1650–1550 BCE). The hands were uncovered inside three pits in a courtyard just outside a palace likely belonging to these non-Egyptian rulers. The first pit contained only a single hand, while the rest were buried in two pits that were made at least several years later. The discovery and subsequent forensic analysis have spurred debate over the origins of the gruesome find. Was it a local Egyptian tradition, or was it introduced by the Hyksos? When did the practice begin, and what meaning did it hold?2
We know that during the New Kingdom—the historical period (c. 1550–1069 BCE) that followed the defeat and expulsion of the Hyksos—Egyptian reliefs and inscriptions routinely record the common battlefield practice of tallying massive piles of severed hands, and in some cases phalluses, as counts of slain enemies. These royal examples involve piles of hands numbering in the thousands, collected and counted at the edge of the battlefield.
But it wasn’t always that way. A fragmentary relief at the Abydos temple of Pharaoh Ahmose (c. 1550–1525 BCE), the Egyptian king who defeated the Hyksos, shows only one small pile of severed hands. And in tomb autobiographies, the soldiers who fought under Ahmose recount how they took the hands of enemies they had personally slain in battle and presented them as trophies to the king. In return, they received an award of money, servants, and land, known as the Gold of Valor. In short, neither the few hands discovered at Avaris nor the near contemporary descriptions of soldiers presenting hands as trophies match the later New Kingdom practice of using severed hands to count the dead on the battlefield.
Indeed, there is no clear evidence that the Egyptians routinely severed hands before the time of the Hyksos. Although the mutilation of enemy bodies is recorded as far back as the Early Dynastic period (on artifacts such as the Narmer Palette, dated to c. 3100 BCE), and some legal punishments from the New Kingdom included the severing of the criminal’s nose and ears, neither military nor judicial contexts record severing hands.
The forensic analysis of the hands from Avaris only adds to the intrigue. Eleven likely belonged to men, while one may have belonged to a woman. Strangely, none of the hands had any of the lower arm bones attached, and none showed evidence of cut marks, suggesting the hands were removed almost surgically by severing the tendons within the wrist joint. Additionally, analysis showed the hands were deposited either before rigor mortis had set in (6–8 hours after death) or after it had worn off (1–2 days).
Numerous scenarios are therefore possible: The hands could have been severed either from living or deceased victims; they could have been removed with surgical care or severed with one stroke and then carefully cleaned after the fact; and they were either buried within a few hours of removal or left on display for at least a day. It’s possible the victims were slain in battle, and the following day their hands were surgically removed, collected, and then buried. But it’s equally possible that living victims had their hands cut off, with the long bones carefully removed and the hands then buried immediately.
Viewed from an Egyptian perspective, the Tell el-Dab‘a hands could be early evidence of the Gold of Valor military reward. However, if the severed hands are viewed from the cultural perspective of the Hyksos, who publicly advertised their West Asian origins, they might instead represent a specific form of criminal punishment. In the Code of Hammurabi, three crimes could result in the loss of a hand: medical malpractice, assisting an escaped slave, and a child striking their father. In the incredibly patrimonial language of West Asia, in which any superior could be referred to by the honorific “father,” the latter could apply to anyone who subverted the power hierarchy, rebelled against the government, or disobeyed orders. Additionally, within the West Asian legal tradition, the king presided over the case and proclaimed final judgment.
AUSTRIAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE IN CAIRO AND THE INSTITUTE FOR EGYPTOLOGY
From the West Asian perspective, therefore, the Tell el-Dab‘a hands can best be explained as a criminal punishment for anything ranging from insubordination to rebellion. Given that the hands were clearly not deposited at the same time, we have evidence for at least two instances at Avaris when the king likely issued his judgment from the palace, the sentence was carried out, and the severed hands were buried in the courtyard. Whether the hands were removed surgically or severed and then cleaned for ideological reasons, or whether they were buried right away or left on display to dissuade other would-be criminals, we may never know. Yet the criminal punishment explanation best accounts for the unique location, small number, and repeated depositing of the hands at Tell el-Dab‘a.
Just as obscure is how a criminal punishment was transformed into the later New Kingdom practice of using severed hands to tally the dead on the battlefield. A West Asian military reward system contemporary with the Code of Hammurabi and the Hyksos is known from the Syrian kingdom of Mari along the Euphrates. In this system, all booty and captives taken in battle were the property of the king, who then redistributed this wealth to soldiers based on valor and merit. Although this tradition may have inspired the later Egyptian reward system, it did not involve corporeal trophies of any kind.
By the time of Ahmose’s war against the Hyksos, Egyptians and West Asian immigrants had been living and fighting side-by-side for at least a century. These types of long-term, cross-cultural interactions can result in a wide variety of adapted, conflated, or hybrid practices. Perhaps Egyptians serving alongside or fighting against West Asian soldiers adopted the concept of a military reward system, which would explain its relatively sudden appearance in Egyptian sources a few decades later, during Ahmose’s war. At that point, severed hands may have been presented to Ahmose as an echo of the judicial punishment for rebellion seen at Tell el-Dab‘a or as an expedient way to prove kills on the battlefield and ensure appropriate compensation. It could have even been an amalgamation of both traditions. Regardless, this new practice, originally inspired by West Asian customs, became a central tenet of the New Kingdom Egyptian military.
Editor’s Note: This article contains images of human skeletal remains. In a land known for its mummies and legends of cursed tombs, perhaps one of Egypt’s most macabre finds was the 2011 discovery of at least a dozen severed right hands at the site of Tell el-Dab‘a (ancient Avaris). It is the only such find ever recorded from ancient Egypt.1 Avaris in the eastern Nile Delta was the Egyptian capital of the Hyksos, who arose from among the local population of West Asian immigrants and ruled Egypt as the 15th Dynasty (c. 1650–1550 BCE). The hands were uncovered inside three […]
