An unusual example of beheading in an Old Kingdom burial at Giza (Egypt)

Ten years ago, the Russian archaeological mission at Giza (IOS RAS) excavated the tomb of the metal worker Perinedju (GE 19) at the eastern escarpment of the necropolis and discovered there an unusual burial of a beheaded male individual with the skull lying apart from the skeleton. The burial may be dated to the late 5th or early 6th Old Kingdom Dynasty (24th–23rd cent. BC). A lesion on the skull suggests that the head was separated from the body when the individual had already been dead. While alive, the man did not demonstrate any physical deviations. The authors argue that the decapitation may have been caused due to a magical ritual. The aim of the ritual is still unclear but available Old Kingdom sources and extrapolated later written evidence suggest three main possibilities: to do the dead person some harm, to neutralize the deceased in the world of the living or to involve into the revival of the beheaded dead divine forces. The search for analogies among excavated burials revealed several similar cases. However, none of Old Kingdom burials followed the same pattern of internment of a beheaded body observed in the tomb of Perinedju. The main reason for this is the lack of well documented archaeological contexts from early excavations and the absence of paleopathological studies of associated bioarcheological materials. Postmortem decapitation is a rare Old Kingdom burial practice. The precondition for revealing the nature and meaning of this phenomenon is the careful attention of excavators to irregular Old Kingdom burials in future

Ancient history · Archaeology · Beaker · Kingdom · Lunatic · Autopsy Techniques and Outcomes · Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies · History · Medicine · Restraint-Related Deaths · Paleontology