New evidence shows that human sacrifice helped populate the royal city of the dead

King Aha, "The Fighter," was not killed while unifying the Nile's two warring kingdoms, nor while building the capital of Memphis. No, one legend has it that the first ruler of a united Egypt was killed in a hunting accident after a reign of 62 years, unceremoniously trampled to death by a rampaging hippopotamus. News of his demise brought a separate, special terror to his staff. For many, the honor of serving the king in life would lead to the more dubious distinction of serving the king in death.

On the day of Aha's burial a solemn procession made its way through the sacred precincts of Abydos, royal necropolis of Egypt's first kings. Led by priests in flowing white gowns, the funeral retinue included the royal family, vizier, treasurer, administrators, trade and tax officers, and Aha's successor, Djer. Just beyond the town's gates the procession stopped at a monumental structure with imposing brick walls surrounding an open plaza. Inside the walls the priests waded through a cloud of incense to a small chapel, where they performed cryptic rites to seal Aha's immortality.

Outside, situated around the enclosure's walls, were six open graves. In a final act of devotion, or coercion, six people were poisoned and buried along with wine and food to take into the afterlife. One was a child of just four or five, perhaps the king's beloved son or daughter, who was expensively furnished with ivory bracelets and tiny lapis beads.

The procession then walked westward into the setting sun, crossing sand dunes and moving up a dry riverbed to a remote cemetery at the base of a high desert plateau.

In the beginning every Egyptian ruler prepared a two-part funerary complex: an enclosure close to the Nile's floodplain for the celebration of rituals and a tomb deeper in the Western Desert—the land of the dead. Recent excavations at Abydos have revealed this 5,000-year-old mud-brick enclosure of Aha, the first king of the 1st dynasty. Six people, probably poisoned in connection with the royal funeral, were buried just outside the enclosure wall. "The king has the power of life and death over his subjects," says Matthew Adams, associate director of the dig. "He has the power to take with him those whom he chooses—or needs—to be at his disposal in the next world."