An ancient Egyptian’s complete genome has been read for the first time

For the first time, the complete genome of a person from ancient Egypt has been sequenced. The DNA was collected from the remains of an older man, possibly a potter, who lived over 4500 years ago.

The ancient Egyptian inherited about a fifth of his DNA from ancestors living in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, more than 1000 kilometres east of Egypt. This suggests that the societies in Egypt and Mesopotamia were connected, despite their distance.

The body was excavated in the early 1900s from Nuwayrat, a necropolis near Beni Hasan in Egypt. It was found in a pottery vessel, which had been placed in a rock-cut tomb. Today, the remains are kept at the World Museum in Liverpool, UK.

“We could actually directly radiocarbon date the remains of this individual,” says Adeline Morez Jacobs at Liverpool John Moores University. He died sometime between 2855 and 2570 BC. That means he lived fairly early in the history of ancient Egypt, which spanned from around 3150 to 30 BC.

The skeleton and DNA both showed the individual was male. Based on the man’s arthritis and other signs, he was estimated to be between 44 and 64 years old – probably on the older side. “He’s probably in his 60s at the time of death, which is incredibly old for that time period,” says Joel Irish, also at Liverpool John Moores University.

The social position of the man is unclear. “He was in what would have been an upper-class burial,” says Irish. But his skeleton shows that he had a hard, physical life. Based on the specific damage, he spent a lot of time looking down, leaning forward and holding his arms out in front of him, says Irish. He also sat for long periods of time on hard surfaces. Based on preserved images of different Egyptian occupations, the researchers think his most likely occupation was a potter.

Using samples from the roots of his teeth, the team was able to sequence the man’s entire genome. Previously it had only been possible to obtain partial genomes from three ancient Egyptians, who lived over 1000 years more recently.

“We have so little genetic sequencing from ancient Egypt,” says Shirly Ben-Dor Evian at the University of Haifa in Israel.

This is because the region’s warm climate degrades DNA more quickly. “It’s just way too hot,” says team member Pontus Skoglund at the Francis Crick Institute in London, who calls the sequencing “a long shot”.

“We hypothesised that the pot burial, in combination with the rock-cut tomb into which the pot burial was placed, provided a stable environment,” says Linus Girdland-Flink at the University of Aberdeen in the UK.

About 80 per cent of the man’s genetic ancestry was North African, as might be expected. But the remaining 20 per cent matched people from the eastern Fertile Crescent, a geographical area that encompasses present-day Iraq, western Iran and parts of Syria and Turkey.

There are several possible explanations, says Ben-Dor Evian. “I’m thinking that explorers were always a thing,” she says. Also, long after farming became commonplace, “there were always populations that continued to be nomadic or semi-nomadic,” she says. Those peoples may have carried DNA between the Fertile Crescent and Egypt.

Archaeologists have already found links between ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. “There was quite a bit of cultural connections with Mesopotamia based on sharing artistic motifs,” says Irish, and goods like lapis lazuli were traded.

There could even be implications for the origin of writing. “The first writing systems emerged almost contemporaneously in the two regions,” says Morez Jacobs: cuneiform in Mesopotamia and Egyptian hieroglyphics just 300 years later.

“Was it a local invention of writing in both places, [or] were they, in some way, affecting each other?” asks Ben-Dor Evian. If one society invented writing, “the idea could have been transmitted through this movement of people,” she says. However, she stresses that one genome is nowhere near enough to draw such a sweeping conclusion: “I would like to see more Egyptian material in Mesopotamia in this time and vice versa.”