Fallen Heroes?—Winlock's ‘Slain Soldiers’ Reconsidered

Abstract

About eighty years ago an excavation unit of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, working in Deir el-Bahri and led by Herbert E. Winlock, discovered a mass grave with more than sixty individuals. The corpses showed evidence ofviolence and were accompanied by military equipment; therefore, they were identified as soldiers killed in combat. Winlock was convinced that they could be connected to a specific historical event, and the dead were interpreted as soldiers of the victorious Theban army of Mentuhotep II slain during the storming of the fortress of Herakleopolis. This article aims to reassess Winlock's arguments and to present a new interpretation of the evidence.

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