In 2025, bioarchaeologist Anne Austin and colleagues published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the largest systematic study of ancient tattooing yet attempted. Across three Sudanese sites, the team examined 1,048 mummies and identified 27 tattooed individuals spanning roughly 1,750 years, from around 350 BCE to 1400 CE. Two findings stand out. The practice changed shape after Nubia became Christian, moving from small dot patterns on the hands of adult women to crosses and eagles on men, women, and children. And one tattooed individual was estimated at around 18 months old, without parallel anywhere in the archaeological record of tattooing.

What did the 2025 Nubian tattoo study find?

The 2025 study, led by Anne Austin and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined 1,048 mummies from three Sudanese sites and identified 27 tattooed individuals, of which 17 are rated definite, 6 probable, and 4 possible. The tattooed individuals span roughly 350 BCE to 1400 CE. It is the largest systematic study of ancient tattooing to date and establishes Nubia as an independent tattooing culture.

How did Nubian tattooing change over time?

Nubian tattooing changed shape across the Christianization of the region around the sixth century CE. In the pre-Christian phase, around 350 BCE to 550 CE, tattooing appeared mainly on adult women as small geometric dot clusters on the hands and forearms. In the Christian period, around 550 to 1400 CE, it became inclusive across men, women, and children, with motifs shifting to crosses, eagles, and Coptic monograms on more visible body locations.

Was a tattooed infant found in Nubia?

Yes. The study documented a tattooed individual estimated at around 18 months old, a finding without parallel in the archaeological record of any tattooing culture. The age estimate uses skeletal aging methods and carries the standard bioarchaeological uncertainty, with a plausible range of roughly 12 to 24 months. The team has hypothesized a protective or apotropaic function for infant tattooing.

Did Christianity suppress tattooing in Nubia?

Not in the way the broader narrative of Christian prohibition might suggest. In Nubia, Christianization appears to have restructured tattooing rather than ending it. The practice expanded to include men and children and adopted Christian motifs such as crosses and Coptic monograms. This makes Nubia a notable counterpoint to the general story of Christian suppression of tattooing.

A landmark study

The 2025 publication by Anne Austin of the University of Missouri at St. Louis and her colleagues, "Tattooing among ancient Nubian populations: A bioarchaeological analysis," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is significant both for what it found and for its scale. Earlier ancient tattoo research has typically rested on a single body or a small handful of specimens. This study examined 1,048 mummies and applied a consistent imaging methodology across all of them, making it the largest systematic investigation of tattooing in the archaeological record.

Of those 1,048 individuals, 27 were identified as tattooed: 17 definite, 6 probable, and 4 possible. The graded confidence levels reflect the difficulty of the work. Tattoo pigment on degraded ancient skin is frequently invisible to the naked eye, so the team relied on infrared reflectography, multispectral imaging, and macroscopic analysis to detect markings that ordinary observation would miss. This methodology extends the near-infrared approach Austin had developed in her earlier work on the Deir el-Medina corpus in neighboring Egypt, now applied to a large population.

The 27 tattooed individuals come from three sites in modern Sudan, each representing a different phase of Nubian history: Kulubnarti, associated with the pre-Christian and earlier periods; Ghazali, a Christian-era monastic community; and Mis Island, which spans a mix of periods. Together they cover roughly 1,750 years, from around 350 BCE through 1400 CE.

The demographic shift

The most historically revealing finding is how the practice changed across time. In the pre-Christian phase, roughly 350 BCE to 550 CE, tattooing in this corpus appears predominantly on adult women, and the markings take the form of small geometric dot clusters on the hands and forearms, relatively private locations.

After the Nubian kingdoms converted to Christianity, around the sixth century CE, the pattern shifts. In the Christian period, roughly 550 to 1400 CE, tattooing becomes inclusive across men, women, and children, and the motifs change to overtly Christian symbols: crosses, eagles, and Coptic monograms. The placement also shifts toward more visible parts of the body.

This shift carries an important interpretive point. The broad narrative of tattoo history often casts Christianity as a suppressor of tattooing, citing prohibitions in the late Roman and medieval West. Nubia complicates that story. Here, the arrival of Christianity did not end tattooing; it restructured it, broadening who was tattooed and giving the practice new religious meaning. Nubia thus stands as a counterpoint, a place where Christian and tattooing traditions merged rather than collided. This connects to the wider Coptic Christian tattooing tradition of the region, in which Christian tattooing persisted for centuries.

The tattooed infant

The single most archaeologically anomalous finding is the identification of a tattooed individual estimated at around 18 months old. No other documented tattooing culture has produced a comparable case in the archaeological record. The discovery raises the possibility that tattooing in Christian-period Nubia could be performed on infants, perhaps as a protective or apotropaic act analogous to the use of amulets in many cultures, a marking placed on a vulnerable child for safekeeping rather than as a rite tied to adulthood.

This finding should be held with appropriate care. The age estimate comes from skeletal aging methods, which carry standard bioarchaeological confidence intervals; the individual's age may plausibly fall anywhere in the range of roughly 12 to 24 months. The protective interpretation is the team's hypothesis, not a documented fact. But even with those caveats, an infant with tattoos is a genuinely new data point in the global history of the practice.

Significance and open questions

The Nubian study substantially expands the known scope of tattooing in northeast Africa. It establishes Nubia, in modern Sudan and southern Egypt, as an independent tattooing culture with its own long tradition, distinct from but adjacent to the Egyptian record. It demonstrates that systematic infrared imaging applied to large skeletal populations can recover a tattoo record that conventional study would never see, providing a model for future work. And it shows that the meaning of tattooing within a single culture can be reorganized by religious change rather than simply continued or suppressed.

Several open questions remain. The full published text and final DOI were still being released at the time the Atlas entry was prepared, and the study may correspond to a version that circulated in preprint form in late 2024; the published version should be cited when fully available. The detailed distribution of age, sex, motif, and body location across all 27 individuals, and the specifics of the imaging protocol applied at scale, sit in portions of the paper not yet fully accessible. For how the Nubian study fits the broader ancient record, and why large-population imaging studies like this one are changing what we can know, see the pillar page on ancient tattooing.

A note on naming: the entry title carries "C-Group" for continuity with the source record, but the study in practice spans the pre-Christian Meroitic through Christian Nubian periods rather than the C-Group horizon narrowly defined. The Atlas treats the study as a multi-period Nubian corpus.

Tiered evidence

  • VERIFIED: The study's scale (1,048 mummies examined, 27 tattooed: 17 definite, 6 probable, 4 possible); the c. 350 BCE to 1400 CE span; the three sites (Kulubnarti, Ghazali, Mis Island); the demographic shift from adult women with hand dots to all-ages Christian motifs; the imaging methodology; the existence of a tattooed infant.
  • MIXED: The precise age of the infant (estimated 18 months, plausible 12 to 24 month range); the protective or apotropaic interpretation of infant tattooing, which is a hypothesis; the broader functional readings across periods.
  • PENDING: The final published DOI and full text were still being released when the entry was prepared; cite the published version when complete.

Cross-references

A note on dignity

The 1,048 individuals examined in this study, and the 27 found to be tattooed, were Nubian people: women, men, and at least one very young child, buried over nearly two millennia by communities in what is now Sudan. The infant in particular deserves to be remembered as a child who was loved and mourned, not reduced to an anomaly. The Atlas presents these findings with respect for the people behind the data and for their living descendants.

Sources

  • Austin, A. E., et al. "Tattooing among ancient Nubian populations: A bioarchaeological analysis." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2025. (DOI pending full public release.)
  • BBC News coverage of the PNAS study, 2025.
  • Site excavation records: Kulubnarti (University of Kentucky), Ghazali (PCMA Warsaw), Mis Island.
  • Austin, Anne. "Ancient Egyptian tattoos." Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 2016 (methodological context).
  • Friedman, RenĂ©e. "The earliest tattoos." In A. Stout (ed.), Written on the Body, 2020.

Editorial

Researched and written by John J. Mayo III, Editor, Tattoo History Atlas. This page reflects current canon as of the Status date above and is refreshed on a quarterly cycle. Confidence tiers are carried from the underlying source record and have not been upgraded.

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