What was it like to live in ancient Egypt during an era of sweeping change? Although we can’t put ourselves in the shoes of ancient Egyptians, we at least know how one of them may have lived now that a whole genome from ancient Egypt has been sequenced for the first time.
A study recently published in Nature details the groundbreaking genetic advancement, and it’s all thanks to one man who lived around 4,500 to 4,800 years ago, when Egypt was in the midst of a transition from the Early Dynastic Period to the Old Kingdom. The genome of this unnamed individual — who worked a strenuous job as a potter — has singlehandedly granted researchers a broader perspective on ancient Egyptian identity.
Unraveling Ancient Egyptian DNA
It’s not exactly under wraps that ancient Egypt has been a cherished subject of research for centuries. Mummies have particularly enthralled researchers, including evolutionary geneticist Svante Pääbo, well known in the scientific community for his work on the Neanderthal genome.
In fact, mummies were Pääbo’s ticket into the field of evolutionary genetics forty years ago, when he recovered DNA from mummy specimens that were around 2,000 years old. Fast forward to today, and DNA technology has vastly improved, allowing researchers to obtain the first whole genome from ancient Egypt.
According to a press statement on the new study, the researchers sequenced this genome from DNA that they extracted from the tooth of a man buried in Nuwayrat, a village 265 km (about 165 miles) south of Cairo. He was buried in a hillside tomb before mummification was standard practice. This may have actually helped preserve his DNA, as chemicals used in mummification, like sodium carbonate, degrade DNA.
Read More: King Tut's Muddy Family Tree was Full of Incest and Intrigue
Genetic Change in a Turbulent Era
With radiocarbon dating, the researchers determined that the man lived during a transitional period between Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom Egypt. The Dynastic Period, according to the researchers, was a dramatic time in Egyptian history, featuring wars, occupation by foreign rulers, and episodes of political collapse.
The researchers say that these conditions would have laid the groundwork for changes in the genetic structure of the Egyptian people. Archaeological evidence from the period had already suggested that ancient Egypt had exchanges of goods and ideas all around the Fertile Crescent, and the genome of the man buried in Nuwayrat further solidified this idea.
The researchers analyzed the man’s genetic code, finding that most of his ancestry was tied to individuals who lived in North Africa. However, 20 percent of his ancestry could be traced to people who lived in Mesopotamia (around modern-day Iraq).
This validates the idea that people were moving into Egypt and mixing with local populations, altering the genetic landscape. The researchers note, however, that more individual genome sequences would be needed to fully understand variation in ancestry during this period of Egyptian history.
“Piecing together all the clues from this individual’s DNA, bones and teeth have allowed us to build a comprehensive picture,” said first author Adeline Morez Jacobs, a former postdoctoral researcher at the Francis Crick Institute. “We hope that future DNA samples from ancient Egypt can expand on when precisely this movement from West Asia started.”
A Hard-Working Potter
As for the man’s daily life, he likely worked in pottery or another trade requiring similar movements. Markings on his bones, signs of outstretched arms, and arthritis in the right foot suggest that he may have sat and worked with a pottery wheel.
Interestingly, he also had a higher-class burial, indicated by the placement of his body in a large pottery vessel. This postmortem privilege was not usually given to potters, but the researchers say that he may have been able to climb up the social ladder by being exceptionally skilled at his job.
Read More: Ancient Egyptians Had Poor Posture at Work, Too
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Yale University Press. Svante Pääbo: The Dark Lord of Ancient DNA
Nature Communications. Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest an increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods
Jack Knudson is an assistant editor at Discover with a strong interest in environmental science and history. Before joining Discover in 2023, he studied journalism at the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University and previously interned at Recycling Today magazine
