Severed hands found outside an ancient Egyptian palace confirm accounts of a trophy-taking custom called the “gold of honor.M. Beitak/blockquote>
Posted on 04/12/2023 11:40:22 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
When Manfred Bietak, an archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences who has led digs at Tell el-Dab’a for decades, first saw the remains, he immediately thought of the trophy-taking ritual. According to ancient accounts, Egyptian warriors presented the hands of slain enemies to the pharaoh, who rewarded them with gold necklaces or golden pendants in the shape of flies...
The care also suggests the hands were removed after death, not hacked from living prisoners. They were probably severed after rigor mortis–a tightening of the tendons in the hours after death–had passed, Gresky argues...
Fingers are among the first parts of the body to decompose and fall apart, so finding intact hands suggests they were all deposited in a single event or ceremony, rather than one at a time...
The “gold of honor” ritual was probably introduced to Egypt by interlopers known as the Hyksos, Bietak says. These invaders–who perhaps came from the eastern Mediterranean–conquered Egypt around 1640 B.C.E. and controlled the region for about a century, ruling from Avaris. They introduced Egyptians to chariots and new types of weapons, such as slings and distinctive battleaxes.
Bietak thinks they also introduced the custom of taking enemies’ hands as trophies. Later in Egypt, the ritual appears to have become standard practice. Ahmose I, the pharaoh who eventually forced the last of the Hyksos out of Egypt, “had a heap of hands depicted on the wall of his temple at Abydos,” Bietak says.
The custom both honored the pharaoh and inflicted punishment beyond the grave. Since the ancient Egyptians believed one’s body had to be intact in order to pass into the next world, severing the right hand would have disfigured their enemies’ souls as well as their bodies, barring them from the afterlife.
(Excerpt) Read more at science.org ...
Severed hands found outside an ancient Egyptian palace confirm accounts of a trophy-taking custom called the “gold of honor.M. Beitak/blockquote>
Severed hands found outside an ancient Egyptian palace confirm accounts of a trophy-taking custom called the “gold of honor.M. Beitak
Raise your hands if you’re sure!............
Eleven right hands were found buried in two of the pits, L1542 and L1543.Gresky et al., Scientific Reports
Pre Vietnam body count
Ears probably wouldn’t survive.
For desert, er, dessert, lady fingers!
he was a very bad stone cutter...
one day, he cut off both his hands. yes it got him out of work for a while, but c’mon, BOTH hands.
Well, we know it wasn’t Mark Anthony..............
Wait I’ll lend you a hand...............
People had their hands cut off for stealing in that part of the world...and they probably still do it. Maybe a prison?? or where they were buried when they got blood poisoning.
I have no idea does not get you Grant Money.
I would have preferred to be paid in gold shekels.
If they had been female Amazon warriors, something else would have been severed.
“Urgat the Philistine is dead!” H/T Joseph Heller
Or any kind, really. :^)
Probably how base five got its start.
“Make sure he doesn’t get paid for the full day.”
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