Whole-genome ancestry of an Old Kingdom Egyptian
nature.com
nature.com
Egyptians don't like the notion that "they moved there from somewhere". They claim their own unique, uninterrupted, history and connection to the land as well as their civilizational independence from Mesopotamian, Asia Minor, Europe, and Africa.
It's also the same you rarely find Egyptian archeologists/scholars on scientific papers. While this might be a matter of ancient history and science to everyone, it's a matter of current day politics for Egyptians and especially the Egyptian government. The "findings" of the paper has to agree with the narrative built and proposed by the ministry of antiquities or they will literally charge whoever publishes it with a national crime.
Same here in India.
These ideas about civilization and racial purity/superiority are a scientific nonsense but very useful for getting people to hate each other.
Translated something like: “To the south of the Western Sea, along the banks of the Flowing Sands, beyond the Red Water and before the Black Water, there lies a great mountain called the Kunlun Hill.”
We move around. We meet people. We make new people.
"Swedish dogs! Your blood is tainted by generations of race mixing with Laplanders. You're basically Finns!"
They needed a central story to unite the ideas.
I’m no expert but I think I have the theory straight.
How do you conclude that from the fact that 1 man of the era had 20% of his genetic material from Mesopotamia?
> Our knowledge of ancient Egyptians has increased through decades of bioarchaeological analyses including dental morphological studies on their relatedness to other populations in North Africa and West Asia
There are other footsteps. The DNA is just a notable rock they’ve clambered over.
> The body was placed in a large pottery vessel inside a rock-cut tomb (Fig. 1b and Extended Data Fig. 1). This treatment would have ordinarily been reserved for individuals of a higher social class relative to others at the site
But,
> This and various activity-induced musculoskeletal indicators of stress revealed that he experienced an extended period of physical labour, seemingly in contrast to his high-status tomb burial.
> In this case, although circumstantial, they are not inconsistent with those of a potter, as depicted in ancient Egyptian imagery.
Checking the corpses of nobility would be a bad idea because they are shipped around for diplomatic reasons. I guess a potter moves around less (though, as a skilled worker, probably moved around a bit?).
there was no such conclusion that i saw having read this.
they are talking of genetic admixture...so the person shared ancestors with someone else sequenced from the mesopotamian area...maybe they both were kids with a parent elsewhere, for example.
Finding some individuals to whom this applies "20% of his genetic ancestry can be traced to genomes representing the eastern Fertile Crescent" doesn't really prove that at all, though?
If you want to see examples you don't even need my school books. Compare these chronological lists in both languages, in English wikipedia or Portuguese wikipedia:
- https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronologia_da_aboli%C3%A7%C3...
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_sla...
Very different!
Politics. The egyption government is very sensitive about egyptology. They can make normal life difficult for people who rock the boat. Novel research or theories are activley discouraged. So it is hard for locals, and safer for outsiders, to make news.
https://youtube.com/@historyforgranite
(No, this isnt an ancient aliens crackpot channel. This guy is doing solid work and does discuss how egyptology is so locked down.)
> Although our analyses are limited to a single Egyptian individual who ... may not be representative of the general population, our results revealed ancestry links to earlier North African groups and populations of the eastern Fertile Crescent. ... The genetic links with the eastern Fertile Crescent also mirror previously documented cultural diffusion ... opening up the possibility of some settlement of people in Egypt during one or more of these periods.
However, it has to be said that many third-world nations are extremely jealous of their identity (and of the narrative around it), due to the perceived threat (or rather, historic record) of foreign interference.
I don’t think it is interesting that there aren’t Egyptian scholars on the topic, whether this national/cultural identity existed or not.
I obviously don’t care if it bruises an ego, I would care if the lack of representation overlooks something though.
Like, you know people till now take pride in the exploits and culture of their supposed ancient ancestors, never mind that for the the vast majority of people, there is no simple and direct line from some ancient illustrious people to them.
The latent political context is the assumption driving the research, that Egyptian culture had to have come from somewhere else, so let's go look for it. You see the same thing when evidence of cultural achievements elsewhere in Africa is unearthed.
Of course you will find a somewhere else, no matter how tenuous the connection, in which case my first sentence above comes into play: let's keep finding the somewhere else until we all get back to Africa, supposedly the birthplace of it all.
EDIT: Since this is being misunderstood, this what I actually mean: For some reason, this finding somewhere else is not applied consistently. Either we should keep finding the somewhere else for all cultures for as far back as we can, or else stop with this nonsensical subtext that just because a culture has some roots from elsewhere, so therefore it cannot have made innovations by itself beyond its supposed origins.
Of course every culture/society had to have come from some previous place/culture/society that changed over time due to an incredibly long and complex set of circumstances. The story one must believe to accept your view is that at a flick of the wrist, humans turned from Cave Men to some vague list of "root societies/civilizations" people moved around. Understanding how that movement happened 15 thousands years ago won't make the jews take over Egypt I promise.
you said a culture (singular) had to have come from another culture (singular), missing the possibility of blending, as worded.
What I am saying is that for some reason, this finding somewhere else is not applied consistently. Either we should keep finding the somewhere else for all cultures for as far back as we can, or else stop with this nonsense that just because a culture has some roots from elsewhere, so therefore it cannot have made innovations by itself beyond its supposed origins.
I'm not a scientist, but as far as I can tell... do that?
Half the interest in archeological type studies seems to be "ok, this the earliest history we know of, what came before that?"
I agree that humans tend to get way too entitled about (maybe) sharing genes with someone who did something cool in past history, but learning about which populations migrated to egypt and from where and when, seems unrelated.
There’s no dishonor in learning more and figuring it out. People babbling about stealing “dibs” from Africa are intellectually not really understanding what they are reading and applying their 2025 perspectives and problems to people hundreds of generations ago who had no conception of Africa, Europe and Asia as artifacts as we see them today.
Think about the situation on the ground. Egypt was the closest thing to Eden on earth. Mesopotamia was the birthplace, in the region if not the world, of the next level of urbanization and state power and economics. So yeah, no doubt through intermarriage, trade, teaching and migration the knowledge of Mesopotamia spread and influenced the Nile… and to great effect… the Egyptian civilization thrived for many centuries.
Touch some grass, seriously. They looked at the DNA of 1 (in words: one) guy and now it's "hey in fact Egyptians all came from Mesopotamia"? You'd have to take many more samples to support such a broad claim, and it's not because of the Ministry of Antiquities suppressing ideas.
Mankind likely did not originate in the Nile valley, hence the fact we find people there from some point in history means they migrated from somewhere else. If you subscribe to the single-origin story (which I think is plausible but not the only possible one, the alternative being various human populations that got separated and re-united in different parts of the world) and think, just for the sake of argument, of Lucy as 'the first human' then humans are immigrants almost everywhere (this will be hard to swallow for lots of people and we know from the historical record (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIJF2RomfGE) that the Voth had problems with that, too, so it's very human).
The narrower Nile valley must have been a relatively inhospitable place for a human during the African Wet Period. When that came to an end around ~7ky ago or so that change made the Nile valley rather suddenly more attractive to many thousands of people who used to roam the lands to the right and left of it. As desertification progressed, communities were forced to go someplace else with some ending up in the Nile valley. In a way, you can to this day see the echoes of that time in the ethnic and cultural diversity of Egyptian society which I think is more of a hallmark of this civilization than an imagined homogenized one-mold-fits-all view.
And it's totally not out of place that some people with roots in Ancient Egypt should have an ancestry that came from the Levant or further from Anatolia or Mesopotamia. Egypt was a big place, rich in people, culture, food, arts and opportunity (and, not to forget, regular festivals with beer, wine and music at the cultural centers; today people cross continents for taking part in festivals with beer, wine and music). Egypt had trade, diplomatic relations and 'military exchanges' (war) with those far-flung places and captives were either maimed or indentured, so as a matter of course we find Egyptians with Mesopotamian admixtures, what did you think?
Quite. Especially considering that the article states that this man was 80% North African with dark to black skin....
It seems like Egyptian archaeologists is a clique of academics that do not like to rock the apple cart and go against established ideas about Egyptian history. There is a lot of gate keeping going on, mostly in part of Zahi Hawass, a narcissist that likes to self insert into every research into the subject, and control publication of results, etc. Even worse, claim attribution for work he's not even part of. So, if you don't kiss the ring, or dare to challenge ideas without his blessing, you'll be pretty much become a pariah that will never access archaeological sites again. Because of this, research in the field seems to be stagnant.
It's big business, has been for almost 5,000 years, and keeping the mysteries alive keeps the money flowing to the cult of Kufu or the modern equivalent.
History for Granite ( https://www.youtube.com/@HistoryforGRANITE ) touches on this powerful explanation for several observable aspects of these ancient sites that otherwise defy explanation. The top of The Great Pyramid was likely flattened so that rich visitors could pay to have an unforgettable picnic at the top. Many passages were filled up with sand and rubble because guides didn't enjoy the extra time and effort in hot dark bat infested areas that tourists demanded. And so on. Zahi is carrying on a long tradition.
I think you're confusing "Egyptian economic activity related to tourism" with "the existence of civilization in Egypt".
Djoser's pyramid seems to have been completed around a hundred years prior to that, and would have drawn crowds sufficient to warrant the large temple, grand entrance, and colonnades which are part of the complex.
There is a great deal of evidence that offerings provided by people traveling to these complexes sustained the religious orders on site who provided guardianship, maintenance, and worship. And that this was planned as part of the construction.
Today tourism makes up a little more than 10% of the economy of Egypt. 2500 years ago, it would have been around 0%, for the simple reason that almost nobody could afford to be a tourist. The big businesses were grain and gold. 5000 years ago, it was actually 0%. That's when the desertification of the Sahara began and the people who had lived there came to Egypt and inserted themselves at the top of society.
Praying wasn't even free, if they had to sacrifice some animal.
It's very interesting to imagine the "green Sahara" cultures, with all of their cities and temples now under tons of sand, that we otherwise have no knowledge of.
I spent a significant part of my teen years in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. There isn't really 1 unified feelings towards the "Ancient Egypt" history among Egyptians. First time I heard about the "Ancient Aliens" conspiracy WAS from an Egyptian. I never really paid the theory much attention until all the articles about how "it's a racist theory" "basically indigenous people can't do things without aliens" narrative was surprising.
There was pride in the telling of the conspiracy theory of Ancient Egyptians contacting aliens. "Of course when the Aliens visited Earth, they had to come to Egypt, you konw. We were in touch with aliens and had far more advanced technologies than all other societies. sadly it's been lost" type thinking.
The general opinion was split between people who don't give a shit about all this pharo shit, people who think it's a cool marketing story in the 21st century, people who think it's their history and identity. It was allover the place
Hawass may be more a manifestation of what foreigners believe an Egyptologist should look like: Indiana Jones hat, cigar, etc. He is influential in large parts because of his popularity in the media outside Egypt.
Could you expand on this?
Waves of occupation over 2000 years eroded any cultural link.
What I read suggests the Berbers have some historical relationship and the Bedouin less. Nasser was an arabist, as were the young egypt political movement of the 19th century.
It's like asking why modern British people aren't strongly identifying with pictish culture or beaker people.
The Egyptian archaeologists assert nationalism and cultural goals and have to deal with Islamic fundamentalists who push back on pre Islamic religious artefacts. Saudi archaeologists have similar pressures.
> What I read suggests the Berbers have some historical relationship and the Bedouin less.
I understand the Copts in Egypt also have a stronger relationship to the ancient culture than the the population as a whole.
Arabs came from Arabia, not Egypt.
Copts are a bit closer to ancient Egypt (their language especially) but their religion is Orthodox Christianity which influences their culture, which came out of the Greek/Roman culture of Ptolemaic-Roman Egypt.
An "Arab" is not a race nor is it exclusionary with Ancient Egypt. If someone had an uninterrupted ancestory line from today to Ramasis II, those ancestors learned Arabic at some point and became Arabs or Muslims themselves.
Ok, most Egyptians I have known would immediately strike out Berbers/Amazeghs identity. They actively dislike "amazeghs" and consider them foreigners even though they look the same, speak the same language, and plenty are legally Egyptians with families that have lived there since the 17th century. Egyptians consider them imposters and maybe thats why they are hated more than the "obviously a foreigner". At least the latter isn't pretending.
But at the "Bedouin" the lines start getting blurred. They identify as independent tribes that partially moved from Arabia in the 7th or 8th century and they are very very adamant about their independence from the Egyptian state and their right to self determination and how they live. They are the libertarians of Egypt, except they actually practice a fully bedouin/nomad/libertarian lifestyle. The state is always fighting with them. Most regular Egyptians I knew consider them Egyptians despite their disapproval. Egyptians public like the bedouins in general. It's a romanticized existence.
The Arabic/Egyptian/Muslim/Christian/Coptic/Pharaonic/Roman/Greek/Ottomon identity of Egyptians (and arabs in general) is a subject of many books.
Did they? Seems like this is erasure of the Copts, a people who, to this day, both still exist, mostly aren't Muslim and speak a language directly descended from ancient Egyptian.
You forgot to add the Nubians/Cushites and other groups south of Egypt. Is it possible that the Egyptians lived next to them for thousands of years without any admixtures of genes and culture with them?
https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs415...
> Next, according to the CRANID nearest neighbour discriminant analysis, the individual cranium most like Nuwayrat is from a West Asian Bedouin male (Individual 2546 in CRANID database), with the following rounding out the top five: Egyptian 26th-30th Dynasty male (Ind 1034), Indian male (2576), Lachish male (2668), and another 26th-30th Dynasty Egyptian male (1031).
> Thus, in line with the genetic results the Nuwayrat individual, subject to limitations imposed by the comparative samples available in the two program datasets (as above), appears most akin phenetically to: Western Eurasians rather than subSaharan Africans dentally and, more specifically, premodern West Asians, i.e., Lachish, based on craniometrics. It is secondarily most similar in craniometric dimensions to ancient Egyptians of a more recent time.
What strong conclusion? You "skim" the article and feel justified making outlandish politicized statements?
> They claim their own unique, uninterrupted, history and connection to the land as well as their civilizational independence from Mesopotamian, Asia Minor, Europe, and Africa.
As does everyone else and which is true for the most part. Does anyone dispute ancient egypt's civilizational status?
> While this might be a matter of ancient history and science to everyone
It isn't a matter of ancient history and science to everyone. Ancient history, science and archaelogy are political for everyone. Egyptology as a field was created by europeans partly to justify taking over egypt. It literally was part of european colonialism.
> It's also the same you rarely find Egyptian archeologists/scholars on scientific papers.
You find it odd that egyptians aren't too keen on egyptology?
> The "findings" of the paper has to agree with the narrative built and proposed by the ministry of antiquities or they will literally charge whoever publishes it with a national crime.
I highly doubt that. Maybe if the "study" undermines egypt's attempt to get their stolen antiquities back. But even then your claim seems outlandish.
People from the ancient near East nearly always depicted themselves as somewhere between white and reddish/light brown and their modern populations fall within the same spectrum.
There's no evidence for near Eastern populations having ever looked "Sub Saharan".
It seems that no evidence is a bit of hyperbole.
Even the citation claiming the burial method was associated with upper class raises doubts: following the link mentions "pot burial" which has commonly been associated with the poor. The problem with identifying bones with "population" is it often says what the common man was like but not the minority elite that ruled and had power if one isn't careful about who they think they're identifying or the demographic structure of society in these ancient cultures.
More generally, if what you're looking at is a cemetery for the poor, there should be a lot of remains, and there shouldn't be much in the way of decoration. If someone carved a tomb for the remains to be in ("The body was interred in a ceramic pot within a rock-cut tomb"), that already disqualifies them from being poor.
You are wrong to think that the majority of Egyptians’ corpses were disposed of in the Nile.
To advance the argument that a pot burial likely didn't indicate a poor burial.
So what, this didn't happen and isn't consistent with any historical practice. An irrelevant non-sequitur to the question at hand of whether pot burial is likely to be a poor commoner or even migrant worker or some representative of elite Egyptian society.
> that already disqualifies them from being poor.
No it does not, you're extrapolating way to much by way of some modern interpretation there's quite a lot of debate around these particular questions of provenance of remains that you're hand waving and trivializing as clear cut.
5,000 is a split second in geological terms. We KNOW how Sinai and the Red Sea looks like 5000 or 20,000 years ago.
That said, it's essentially how most people think of the Mediterranean basin by the middle bronze age, not too much later than this.
Note, Ancient Egypt emerged from prehistoric times in 3150 BCE (it hadn’t existed for millennia then), with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt.