A re-examination of 5000-year-old human skulls from the Egyptian city of Abydos, stored at Cambridge University for a century, has uncovered dark secrets regarding Egypt’s first kings. 

Researchers found evidence of violent trauma — including linear skull fractures and sharp-force wounds — supporting long-standing suspicions that servants and lower-level officials were executed or sacrificed to accompany and serve their pharaohs into the afterlife, revealing the grim human cost behind early Egyptian life.