*Written by Lark Devon, author of adult fantasy romance where the research shows. Published September 9, 2026.* **Short answer:** First Dynasty royal tombs at Abydos were surrounded by planned subsidiary graves for members of the royal household. The arrangement and the young adult remains support an organized funerary event tied to royal afterlife power, while the exact cause and timing of each death remain unresolved. Why would a king take his whole staff into the grave with him? I did a ton of reading on Egyptian death cults before I wrote *House of Silence*, and this was the part I couldn't stop thinking about. I wanted to know how much of it is evidence and how much is legend. ## What the graves show at Abydos The First Dynasty begins around 3100 to 2900 BCE, and the royal cemetery at Umm el-Qaab is where the evidence turns administrative. From King Aha onward, the central royal tomb came with rows of smaller subsidiary graves. Djer's complex had at least 318 such burials, with the full plan possibly approaching 600. Repeated grave forms, a roofed complex, and markers naming people by office point to planning. The architecture presents a household arranged for the king's death and whatever afterlife service royal ideology expected. I keep thinking of it as a court roster written in stone, where you meet people by their jobs before you learn anything else about them. ## Who were the retainers? The word retainer can make these people sound like faceless furniture. The stelae complicate that picture. Rough limestone markers preserve names and titles for administrators, attendants, artisans, and other court personnel. The record also includes women, whose roles cannot safely be reduced to wife, concubine, or harem member. Aha's sampled retainers were young men in their twenties. That demographic pattern supports selection from a working court, though the sample cannot describe every grave. Djer's larger complex and varied titles suggest a royal household with differentiated jobs and obligations. ## Does the arrangement prove sacrifice? It proves planning more securely than it proves method. Royal and subsidiary chambers appear to have been roofed as one intended complex, and the graves were laid out in orderly rows. Those facts support near-simultaneous interment after a royal death. Older scholarship has called the practice sacrifice for the state. Other readings have emphasized court ritual, royal ideology, and the logistics of a funeral procession. Aha's young adult sample and the scale of the enclosure make deliberate deaths plausible. The surviving evidence does not support a single account of how each death happened. ## Why would a king need a household after death? The simplest historical inference is continuity. A royal household that served the king in life could be represented as serving him after death, making the court's structure visible at the threshold of the afterlife. The grave layout puts the king's personal authority on the ground where you can see it, in named offices, supplies, and controlled movement. This was a short-lived First Dynasty experiment. The clearest evidence clusters in this period and declines toward its end. Later Egyptian traditions developed other ways to imagine labor for the dead, including much later shabtis, yet those belong to different centuries and cannot explain the First Dynasty custom. Where I landed is sadder than the legend. These were people with jobs and names, and we still can't say how most of them died. ## Myth vs. Reality | Popular claim | Evidence-led reality | |---|---| | Every retainer was buried alive. | Planned death and interment are plausible; individual causes remain unresolved. | | The graves held anonymous servants. | Stelae name administrators, attendants, artisans, and other personnel. | | The king was buried with a random crowd. | Repeated layouts and court titles point to organized household planning. | | The practice lasted through Egyptian history. | The strongest evidence belongs to the First Dynasty and fades afterward. | > [!lore] Thirty-seven attendants lie silent. The thirty-eighth is still asking questions. *House of Silence* is now available on Lark Devon. [Enter the tomb →](https://larkdevon.com/storytime/story/house-of-silence) ## How I Used This in House of Silence <!-- lark-relationship-inline-image -->  I stole the pressure of the rows. A household can be intimate and bureaucratic at the same time, and the Abydos evidence gave me a way to make duty feel physical. Every marker implies an assignment, every route implies someone who has decided where a body belongs. The novel makes choices the archaeology cannot certify. Henuti's fear and loyalty belong to the story's dramatic machinery. The research supplies the harder floor beneath her: named work, controlled spaces, and a court whose obligations continue into darkness. Abydos supplies the institutional pressure; Henuti and her choices belong to the fiction. ## What Henuti Thinks *Henuti has kept a royal household running since childhood. Give her a list of offices and graves. She will find the missing instruction.* --- I understand the arrangement. A household requires order when the mistress is alive. It requires more order when she is dead, because dead women do not request the correct vessel or complain that the linen has been folded badly. The markers preserve names and titles. This is useful. A person with a title has been assigned a task, and a task can be performed. I would like to know who assigned the final one. The young men found near King Aha were in their twenties. That is an age for strong backs and poor judgment. It is also an age at which a person might still believe an official promise. The graves do not tell us every cause of death. I find this omission inefficient. I have served one mistress for fifteen years. If her household is required to follow her, I would prefer the instructions before the roof is closed. I would also prefer the wine to remain where I can see it. > [!lore] A sealed royal tomb, a presence in the dark, and a woman asking for a future of her own. Read *House of Silence* on Lark Devon. [Start with the free first chapter.](https://larkdevon.com/storytime/story/house-of-silence) ## Related Questions **How many retainers were buried with Djer?** Djer's complex had at least 318 subsidiary burials, and the complete plan may have accommodated close to 600. Archaeological disturbance makes the total uncertain. **Were women among the subsidiary burials?** Yes. Names and remains include women, although their exact roles and relationship to the king cannot be assumed from sex alone. **Did shabtis replace royal retainers?** Shabtis are much later objects and belong to later funerary traditions. They cannot serve as a demonstrated explanation for the decline of First Dynasty subsidiary burial. **What is the strongest evidence for a planned event?** The repeated grave forms, orderly rows, names and titles, and the relationship between royal and subsidiary structures together support deliberate planning. No single feature carries the argument by itself. **What remains unknown?** The precise sequence and cause of death for many individuals remain unknown. Archaeology supports several inferences with different levels of confidence. ## Related Reading - [Were Egypt's Royal Retainers Buried Alive? What Archaeology Can Actually Tell Us](https://larkdevon.com/blog/were-egypts-royal-retainers-buried-alive) - [Inside a First Dynasty Royal Tomb: What Was Sealed in the Dark?](https://larkdevon.com/blog/inside-a-first-dynasty-royal-tomb) - [What First Dynasty Tombs Reveal About Status in Life and Death](https://larkdevon.com/blog/what-first-dynasty-tombs-reveal-about-status) - [The Women Buried Around Egypt's First Kings](https://larkdevon.com/blog/the-women-buried-around-egypts-first-kings) - [Why Did Egyptians Make a Corpse-Eating Jackal Guardian of the Dead?](https://larkdevon.com/blog/why-did-egyptians-make-a-corpse-eating-jackal-guardian) - [How Old Is Anubis? Tracing a God Across Three Thousand Years](https://larkdevon.com/blog/how-old-is-anubis) - [Did Anubis Always Weigh the Heart? How His Role Changed Over Time](https://larkdevon.com/blog/did-anubis-always-weigh-the-heart) - [Anubis and Wepwawet: How to Tell Egypt's Two Jackal Gods Apart](https://larkdevon.com/blog/anubis-and-wepwawet-how-to-tell-egypts-two-jackal-gods-apart) - [Sex, Death, and Resurrection in Egyptian Religion: What the Evidence Really Dates To](https://larkdevon.com/blog/sex-death-and-resurrection-in-egyptian-religion-what-the-evidence-really-dates-to) ## Sources 1. Alice Stevenson, “The Egyptian Predynastic and State Formation,” *Journal of Archaeological Research* 24 (2016). [DOI](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-016-9094-7) 2. Ellen F. Morris, “Sacrifice for the State: First Dynasty Royal Funerals and the Rites at Macramallah's Rectangle,” in Nicola Laneri, ed., *Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean*, Oriental Institute Seminars 3 (Oriental Institute, 2007; second printing with minor corrections, 2008). [PDF](https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/shared/docs/ois3.pdf) 3. Geoffrey T. Martin, *Umm el-Qaab VII: Private Stelae of the Early Dynastic Period from the Royal Cemetery at Abydos* (Harrassowitz, 2011). [Publisher record](https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/Umm_el-Qaab_VII/titel_3975.ahtml) 4. W. M. Flinders Petrie, *The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty* (1900–1901), via UCL. [Abydos Tomb O](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/abydos/abydostombo.html) 5. University College London, “Writing of names in the First Dynasty,” Digital Egypt, accessed 2026. [Digital Egypt](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/writing/earlynames.html) 6. University of Pennsylvania Museum, “Archaeologists Discover Evidence that Courtiers Were Sacrificed to Accompany Early Egyptian Kings into the Afterlife,” accessed 2026. [Institutional report](https://www.penn.museum/about/press-room/press-releases/archaeologists-discover-evidence-that-courtiers-were-sacrificed-to-accompany-early-egyptian-kings-into-the-afterlife) 7. Matthew Adams, “The Search for Egypt's First Kings,” *Expedition* 65, no. 3 (March 2024). [Penn Museum](https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-search-for-egypts-first-kings/) 8. Laurel Bestock, “The Early Dynastic Funerary Enclosures of Abydos,” *Archéo-Nil* 18 (2008). [Persée](https://www.persee.fr/doc/arnil_1161-0492_2008_num_18_1_956) 9. Roselyn Campbell, “New Data from Old Bones: Using Bioarchaeology and Forensics to Reassess Legacy Data from Ancient Abydos, Egypt,” *Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology*, accepted 2026, formatted version pending. [Abstract](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-archaeology/articles/10.3389/fearc.2026.1858940/abstract)