Concealed for millennia beneath the burial mounds of a once-mighty but misunderstood African empire, the skeletons of hundreds of royal servants line the interior of their kings grave. But was this a voluntary mass suicide-or mass murder? Once Egypts rival in power and glory, the Nubian Empire remained shrouded in mystery until the 1920s. Even so, archaeologists and explorers have only recently begun to credit such sophistication and splendor to its black populace. But why did such a civilized culture resort to such a violent and bizarre way of burying their dead? And what are its surprising links to modern-day suicides cults like Jonestown and Heavens Gate?