The ancient Egyptians took a number of measures to safeguard the pyramids. But did they ever resort to booby traps?
The answer, Egyptologists told Live Science, is an emphatic no.
It’s not clear where the idea of booby traps inside Egypt’s pyramids originated. Tombs with booby traps have at times been portrayed in movies (such as Indiana Jones films) and video games (such as the Tomb Raider franchise). But it doesn’t appear that the ancient Egyptians used booby traps, like a spiked pit beneath a false floor or a rope snare that could leave an intruder hanging upside down, at all.
“Booby traps are unknown to Egyptologists,” Rolf Krauss, an independent scholar and Egyptologist who has written extensively on Egypt’s pyramids, told Live Science in an email. Krauss said booby traps would not have been effective at stopping robbers who wished to plunder a pyramid. He noted that ancient tomb robbers worked in large teams and a booby trap would not have gotten all of them.
You “may catch one or perhaps two tomb robbers in/with a booby trap,” Krauss said. “But what about the others? A tomb or funerary construction large enough to hide a booby trap cannot be entered and robbed by a single person; only a team would be able to do that.” Instead, pyramid builders used a range of architectural means to prevent people from robbing the structures.
Related: What did the ancient Egyptian pyramids look like when they were built?
In his book “Securing Eternity: Ancient Egyptian Tomb Protection from Prehistory to the Pyramids” (The American University in Cairo Press, 2019), Clark wrote that one reason pyramids were built was to help protect the pharaoh’s final resting place. Before pyramids were constructed, pharaohs were buried in smaller “mastaba” tombs — flat-roofed, rectangular structures with inward-sloping walls — that were easier to break into, he said. By contrast, tomb robbers had to dig a much deeper tunnel into or underneath pyramids to get to the pharaoh’s burial chamber.
“The sheer mass and nature of the resistant materials that comprised the pyramid’s superstructure provided a high level of protection to the internal arrangements within and/or below,” Clark told Live Science in an email.
After the pharaoh was buried, the passageways and entrances to the pyramid were blocked off. There are passageways in the Great Pyramid that do not lead to the burial chamber, but their exact purpose is unclear; it’s not certain if they were created to deceive intruders.
The “very blockings of the passageways and shafts in some pyramids could also present a hazard to an intruder,” Clark said. “Sadly, this was made evident in [Egyptian archaeologist] Zakaria Goneim’s excavation of the Third Dynasty Pyramid of Sekhemkhet at Saqqara in the 1950s. As Goneim’s workmen were clearing the main passage into the pyramid, the backfill and blockings in a construction shaft above the main entrance corridor collapsed onto them, killing one and injuring two.”
In ancient times, Egyptians used “sliding stone blocks to close off burial chambers,” David Ian Lightbody, an Egyptologist and adjunct professor at the University of Vermont, told Live Science in an email.
Lightbody added that “spells of magical protection” were written on some of the pyramids. Known as the “Pyramid Texts,” they do not “curse” a tomb robber, but they were thought to provide the pharaoh with magical protection as he worked his way through the afterlife. One line says, “Osiris, carry off all those who hate [the pharaoh], who speak evilly against his name” (translation by Samuel Mercer).
One of the most serious hazards for a robber was the punishment for getting caught. Clark noted that a 20th-dynasty (circa 1186 to 1070 B.C.) text suggests that the punishment for robbing a tomb was getting your nose and ears cut off and then being impaled.
Despite these measures, protections often failed. Many pyramids, including the Great Pyramid constructed for the pharaoh Khufu, were robbed in antiquity or the Middle Ages (circa A.D. 500 to 1500). During the 18th dynasty (circa 1550 to 1295 B.C.), the Egyptians stopped building royal pyramids and instead buried pharaohs within the Valley of the Kings, a decision which may have made it easier to guard the tombs. This still did not prevent theft, however; most tombs in the valley were robbed, with the tomb of Tutankhamun being a notable exception.
