Skeleton of man from ancient Egypt gives up its secrets in scientific first

DNA taken from man living up to 4,800 years ago suggests mixing of populations

Facial reconstruction of the individual from Nuwayrat using 3D scan data of the skull and analysis of the bones. Photo: Caroline Wilkinson, Liverpool John Moores University

The first whole ancient Egyptian genome has been sequenced by researchers, taken from a man who lived 4,500 to 4,800 years ago in the age of the first pyramids.

By investigating chemical signals in his teeth relating to diet and environment, the researchers showed that the individual was likely to have grown up in Egypt.

They then used evidence from his skeleton to estimate sex, age, height, and information on ancestry and lifestyle. They found marks which indicate a lifetime of hard labour and signs suggesting he could have worked as a potter or in a trade requiring comparable movements, as his bones had muscle markings from sitting for long periods with outstretched limbs.

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His higher-class burial is unexpected for a potter, who would not normally receive such treatment but researchers suggested he may have been exceptionally skilled or successful to advance his social status.

Some 80 per cent of his ancestry was related to ancient people in North Africa and 20 per cent to ancient people in West Asia.

The Sphinx is seen in front of the Pyramid of Chephren in Giza, Cairo. Getty Images

This finding is genetic evidence that people moved into Egypt and mixed with local populations at this time, which was previously only visible in archaeological artefacts.

During this period of ancient Egyptian history, archaeological evidence has suggested trade and cultural connections existed with the Fertile Crescent, particularly the area covering modern Iraq.

Researchers believed that objects and imagery, like writing systems or pottery, were exchanged, but genetic evidence has been limited due to warm temperatures preventing DNA preservation.

In this study, the research team extracted DNA from the tooth of an individual buried in a ceramic pot in a tomb cut into the hillside in Nuwayrat, a village 265km south of Cairo, using this to sequence his genome. His burial took place before artificial mummification was standard practice, which may have helped to preserve his DNA.

It is the oldest DNA sample from Egypt to date. Forty years ago, Nobel Prize winner Svante Paabo unsuccessfully attempted to extract DNA from people from ancient Egypt, investigating 23 mummies, one of which was a child that he believed could be cloned.

Pottery coffin and archaeological remains of the Nuwayrat individual, as discovered in 1902. Photo: The Garstang Museum of Archaeology, University of Liverpool

Improvements in techniques led to today’s breakthrough, published in Nature, by researchers from the Francis Crick Institute and Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU).

The burial had been donated by the Egyptian Antiquities Service, while under British rule, to the excavation committee and was initially housed at the Liverpool Institute of Archaeology (which later became part of the University of Liverpool) and then transferred to World Museum Liverpool.

Adeline Morez Jacobs, Visiting Research Fellow at Liverpool John Moores University, said: “Piecing together all the clues from this individual’s DNA, bones and teeth have allowed us to build a comprehensive picture. We hope that future DNA samples from ancient Egypt can expand on when precisely this movement from West Asia started.”

Linus Girdland Flink, Lecturer in Ancient Biomolecules at the University of Aberdeen, said: “This individual has been on an extraordinary journey. He lived and died during a critical period of change in ancient Egypt, and his skeleton was excavated in 1902 and donated to World Museum Liverpool, where it then survived bombings during the Blitz that destroyed most of the human remains in their collection.

"We’ve now been able to tell part of the individual’s story, finding that some of his ancestry came from the Fertile Crescent, highlighting mixture between groups at this time.”