Bioarchaeological analysis of a group of severed hands found in Egypt confirms that they may represent the first direct evidence of an ancient custom known as the ‘gold of honour’.
In a ‘gold of honour’ ceremony, soldiers would present the hands of their enemies to the pharaoh – both as war trophies and to ensure that their foes would not be able to pass into the afterlife, as this required the body to be intact – and be rewarded with prestigious objects like gold collars. The practice is known from temple and tomb inscriptions from the New Kingdom (18th-20th Dynasties) onwards, but until now no physical evidence had been found.
The 12 hands in question were unearthed in 2011 in three pits in the forecourt of the 15th Dynasty palace (c.1640-1530 BC) at Tell el-Dab’a in north-eastern Egypt. The discovery prompted a debate about whether they represented ritual trophy-taking or the amputation of limbs as punishment. However, there are no known references to the severing of hands as punishment in ancient Egyptian texts, and recent analysis by a team from the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) strongly supports the suggestion that the hands are connected to a ‘gold of honour’ ceremony.
Osteological investigation determined that the pits contained the right hands of at least 12 individuals (and perhaps up to 18, as several disarticulated fingers were also found). Of the 12 examined, 11 of the hands are thought to be male, while one may be female, and all of them belong to individuals who had reached adulthood but not old age. This supports the idea they were military trophies, taken mostly from males of fighting age. Closer examination confirmed that all lower arm bones had been carefully removed before the hands alone were buried in the pits, and revealed that they had been detached with surgical precision, leaving no cutmarks at all, pointing to ritualistic amputation rather than barbaric punishment. This also suggests that they were most likely removed after death rather than from living prisoners, probably after rigor mortis had passed. The context in which the hands were found – carefully placed in shallow pits in a very prominent location in front of the palace’s throne room – is further evidence that they were the result of public ritual deposition.
The discovery from Tell el-Dab’a dates to c.1500 BC, when the site was known as Avaris, and served as the centre of power for a group of foreign invaders known as the Hyksos. Thanks to inscriptions and pictorial evidence, we know that the ‘gold of honour’ ceremony was in use by 50-80 years after this date at the latest, but this find indicates that the custom may have been first introduced to Egypt by the Hyksos.
The results of the latest research have been published in Scientific Reports (https:// doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32165-8).
