Accessory Staff or Walking Aid? An Attempt to Unravel the Artefact's Function by Investigating its Owner's Skeletal Remains.

Ancient Egyptian statuary and iconography present a wealth of representations depicting men holding sticks or staves of various forms. These objects are usually interpreted as symbols of power and high social status, and their possible alternative or parallel function has received little scholarly attention. Combining archaeological, iconographic and biological data, the present paper investigates two late Old Kingdom/early First Intermediate Period burials from Saqqara-West, belonging to an elderly female (B.540) and a young male (B.555) both buried with a single wooden stick. In order to test a hypothesis that the sticks were used to aid walking, the skeletal remains of the deceased were examined for evidence of pathology that could compromise the person's mobility. The lack of such findings in the skeletal remains of the male deceased and his young age excluded the possibility of the stick being used for anything other than symbolic purposes; it was most likely associated with the person's social status or official rank. Sticks and staves were not customarily associated with women; hence, in the light of the skeletal findings of pathology and advanced age of the female from B.540, the stick deposited in the deceased's coffin could have been used as a walking aid.