Nearly four thousand years ago, five princesses of Egypt's Twelfth Dynasty were laid to rest at Dahshur with daggers, bows, and maces — weapons long assumed to be ceremonial. A new skeletal study now reads the bones themselves as testimony, finding in their deformities and fractures the unmistakable signature of women who trained, drew bows, and lived physically demanding lives. History has a habit of imagining powerful women as passive figures in the margins of male reigns; these bones offer a quiet, durable correction.