In a gruesome exchange about 3,600 years ago, the severed right hands of at least 12 individuals were traded for gold and then buried in a royal palace in ancient Egypt, a new study finds.
Scientists discovered the severed hands buried in three pits during a 2011 excavation of a courtyard in the palace, located in an ancient city of Avaris (modern-day Tell el-Dab'a) in northern Egypt's eastern Nile delta region. In the new study, researchers suggest that at least 11 of the hands belonged to males, but that the sex of the 12th individual is uncertain, meaning that it could have belonged to a female.
