Pyramids are believed to be burial mounds for the rich and the elite in ancient Egypt. However, a study has now found that the pyramids in Egypt and Sudan might also hold the remains of the poor. Scientists studied  the archaeological site of Tombos in Sudan and found that "pyramid tombs, once thought to be the final resting place of the most elite, may have also included low-status high-labor staff."

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The research was published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 

Several parts of Sudan were under the control of ancient Egyptians at one time and Tombos was established as an Egyptian colony. The area where Tombos is located was once known as Nubia or Kus. Tombos was established after the Egyptians captured the region around 1400 BC. 

"Shortly after the Egyptian conquest of Nubia, Tombos was constructed by the Egyptians in what was Nubian territory to facilitate colonial control," the team wrote in the study.

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Tombos in Sudan

Tombos has tombs built for the wealthy whose bodies were placed there after they died, with small pyramids built on top of them. The team studied 110 skeletons at these tombs. To know who were the people buried there, the scientists analysed the points the muscles and ligaments attached to the bone.

Also Read: Scientists detect huge city under Giza pyramids in Egypt. Not possible, experts say

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They wrote that for people who do hard labour, the muscles and ligaments require a stronger mode of attachment. "This can result in distinct crests and ridges on the bone at the point of attachment", also known as entheseal changes.

Those who had a low rate of entheseal changes were supposedly high-status individuals who worked in bureaucracy and didn't do a lot of labour. However, the researchers found bodies with a high rate of entheseal change, suggesting that the pyramids also housed people of lower class who did laborious work.

Pyramids not only for rich

This finding led the researchers to believe that the pyramids were not only for the rich, and lower-class labourers were also buried next to them. "Social classes were not segregated, but instead that a hard labouring non-elite were buried alongside an elite who avoided tasks that led to entheseal wear," the team wrote in the study. 

Also Read: Discovered over 100 years ago, no archaeologist has dared to open THIS mysterious 2,300-year-old Egyptian mummy

First author of the study, Sarah Schrader, an associate professor of archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands, puts forward plausible reasons for the same.

She told LiveScience that elite individuals probably wanted to "reinforce a hierarchical social order". 

According to study co-author Stuart Tyson Smith, an anthropology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, this meant surrounding the elite dead with the non-elites who "worked in some capacity for them, effectively replicating the social order with burials in and around their funerary monuments."

The findings were only focussed on the pyramids in Sudan, and whether or not the same applied to the pyramids in Egypt needs to be studied.

Huge city detected under Egypt pyramids

Another groundbreaking study about the Giza pyramids has revealed a secret city lying under the pyramids in Egypt. Two scientists claim that a region spanning more than 6,500 feet, and 10 times larger than the pyramids, is buried beneath the giant structures. Corrado Malanga, from Italy's University of Pisa, and Filippo Biondi from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland say they have found eight vertical cylinder-shaped structures extending more than 2,100 feet below the pyramids. There are also more unknown structures 4,000 feet deeper.

Nicole Ciccolo, the project's spokesperson, said, "A vast underground city has been discovered beneath the pyramids. The groundbreaking study has redefined the boundaries of satellite data analysis and archaeological exploration."

However, some people are sceptical about the claims, saying it is hard to know what lies under the ground without digging it up.