ASU researchers shed light on ancient tattoos in the Nile Valley
Reconstruction of geometric tattoos on the right hand of an adult woman from Semna South. Illustration by Mary Nguyen/©2025 UMSL
Long after an archaeological excavation, discoveries can still be made. One such example of this is newly discovered tattoos from ancient Nubia, nearly doubling the amount previously known from the ancient Nile Valley.
Brenda Baker, bioarchaeologist and professor in Arizona State University's School of Human Evolution and Social Change, joined forces with Anne Austin, assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, to conduct a systematic survey of more than 1,000 individuals found in three different sites in Sudan — Semna South, Qinifab School and Kulubnarti — and spanning the period from 350 BCE–1400 CE.
In their newly published article in PNAS, “Revealing Tattoo Traditions in Ancient Nubia through Multispectral Imaging,” they document their findings of tattoos on individuals at two of the three sites — Semna South and Kulubnarti — including on young children.
“I had known there were tattoos in the Semna South collection for quite some time,” said Baker, who is also a researcher with ASU’s Center for Bioarchaeological Research. “I had always wanted to do much more of a systematic survey because a lot of them are not that visible to the naked eye.”
When Austin came to the Tempe campus for the survey, she brought with her multispectral imaging technology.
“We use near-infrared imaging,” Austin said. “That infrared light allows us to look just slightly below the surface. Under the infrared, tattoos just emerge, and that gives us a way to detect them that makes it much easier to find tattoos than just with the naked eye alone.”
To help with the survey, Baker and Austin were joined by Tatijana Jovanović, who had just graduated from ASU with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and is now a graduate student at University College London.
Using multispectral imaging technology, Austin, Baker and Jovanović found 25 previously unknown individuals with tattoos — almost doubling the 30 known tattooed individuals from the Nile Valley.
Microscopic imaging and the distribution of the tattoos further revealed a shift in tattoo practices during the Christian period, including tattooing on children under age 3.
“This is the first time that I know of where we find such consistent evidence on really young children,” Austin said. “We have somebody who's under 1 that possibly has tattoos, definitely a 1-year-old with tattoos, and we find multiple children, even a child who's 3, who has multiple tattoos, one over another. This is not just showing that they were tattooed, but it might have even happened multiple times during that really early period.”
The latter is a known Christian community, so extensive tattooing at Kulubnarti — including what may be cross-shaped markings on the forehead — provides the earliest evidence for Christian tattoo traditions in northeast Africa and could be ancestral to modern Christian practices in the region.
Tattooing might also have been done for medicinal purposes, as a way to prevent or treat illnesses.
“We're seeing superimposition of new tattoos over older tattoos, even in children as young as 3 or 4 years old, so that may be due to illness — something like malaria that causes recurrent fevers and headaches,” Baker said. “We know that malaria was prevalent in the area and other diseases, of course, can cause high fevers. There may have been some sort of curative aspect to the tattoos, and there is some ethnographic evidence for that.”
Baker added that two adults had tattoos on their backs, which may have also been for medicinal purposes.
The excavation of cemeteries at Semna South and Kulubnarti were conducted by the University of Chicago and University of Colorado, respectively, in the 1960s and 70s as part of the UNESCO International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, while work in at Qinifab was conducted by an ASU team under Baker’s direction as part of the international Merowe Dam Archaeological Salvage Project.
All remains were gifted to the institutions by the government of the Republic of Sudan and are cared for at ASU. The collections had undergone further examination in the years since their excavation, but the evidence of tattoos had not been readily apparent without the use of modern near-infrared technology and software.
For Baker, more work needs to be done to gain a better understanding of tattooing in the region.
“We are finding that about 20% of people were tattooed, and that’s probably a really low estimate because we don't have the tissue preservation to really say that,” said Baker. “But still, we don't get the evidence that everybody was tattooed.
“So why were these people tattooed? We've got a lot more to learn.”
And for Jovanović, the experience allowed her to gain significant hands-on learning experience.
“To our knowledge, we were the first people to see these tattoos in hundreds of years. It was surreal to think I was a part of this project,” Jovanović said.
More Science and technology
Roots of Alzheimer’s disease extend beyond the brain
For decades, Alzheimer’s disease has been treated as a condition that begins and ends in the brain. Researchers have focused on the buildup of amyloid plaques, tangles of tau protein and the slow…
ASU microscopes help solve decades-old asteroid-impact deposit mystery
Axel Wittmann had always had “a fondness for exotic rocks,” as he puts it, his favorite being suevite, formed from intense meteorite collisions. But in 2009, when he met fellow geologist Philippe…
Major in motion
Inside a dimly lit computer lab at Arizona State University, U.S. Space Force Maj. Tyler Williams leans over a glowing monitor, lines of simulated network traffic scrolling by faster than most eyes…