Overview

• Researchers applied machine learning to pattern analysis of over 900 tombs at the 74-acre Adaïma cemetery.
• Multiple female burials dating to 3300–2700 BC exhibit deliberate post-mortem limb severance and precise reassembly for symbolic effect.
• A teenage girl’s interment was aligned to the winter solstice sun and oriented toward Sirius’s rising, marking the oldest archaeological link to the Osiris-Isis narrative.
• Spatial and temporal patterns reveal evolving funerary customs tied to celestial events alongside indications of emerging social hierarchy.
• Findings position these rural mortuary practices as foundational rituals later absorbed into the state-level religion of Egypt’s first pharaohs.