The (unembalmed) body of a man reveals what the inhabitants of Ancient Egypt were like.

The arid desert conditions and the practice of embalming and mummification, which was widespread socioculturally during the periods of various Egyptian dynasties, make obtaining DNA from human remains extremely difficult. It should be noted that the liquids used in the mummification process degrade and destroy the genetic material of all soft tissues, which remain as leather. Inside a rock-cut tomb in the ancient necropolis of Nuwayrat (a town about 265 kilometers from Cairo), a large sealed clay tub was found, containing the unembalmed body of an adult man.

This tub is currently part of the Garstang Museum of Archaeology in Liverpool, and a joint research project between researchers from Liverpool and the Francis Crick Institute in London has yielded enough DNA from the lower part of the molars (which fit inside the jawbone) to obtain the complete genome. The fact that the clay receptacle was so well sealed and within the rock facilitated a stable environment which has allowed the conservation of DNA.

Who was that man?

The use of forensic anatomical techniques, the recovery of ancient molecules, and forensic paleogenetics together gives us a great deal of information about who this unknown person was. The remains correspond to a man of about 60 years old, an advanced age for the time, because his bones show osteoarthritic degeneration compatible with that age. According to the marks left by the muscles and tendons on the skeleton, he had worked hard with his hands and arms, while his legs showed signs of ischial inflammation probably due to prolonged sitting, with greater osteoarthritis in the right foot, compatible with using a standing shift. This person probably rose in social status to deserve to be buried in the necropolis.

Genome analysis and comparison with ancient and current genomes from the region shows that most of his Genetic heritage came from the inhabitants of the North African Neolithic, with a second component (about 20%) coming from MesopotamiaThere is no overt homozygosity, and therefore, his parents and relatives were not related to each other. Had he immigrated from other populations near Mesopotamia? Isotope analysis and their proportions in his tooth enamel reveal no, because his childhood was in Egypt and his diet was omnivorous, with plants such as barley and wheat, and probably land animals and fish from the Nile.

What did he look like physically? We know that he must have had dark hair and eyes and dark to black skin. has made a facial reconstruction of that person, without hair or beard, because he only used the information that could be obtained from genetic analysis. Human features that are close to us and that allow us to imagine what this individual from the ancient Egyptian empire was like, at the time when the early pyramids, stepped, like the pyramid at the Saqqara necropolis.

Exchange with the Sumerian Empire

What was the genetic origin of Egyptian society at that time? Ancient Egypt, despite internal wars and reunifications, lasted for several dynasties over millennia. It was believed that the earliest period was closed to the outside world, although culturally many similarities have been described with the Sumerian Empire of that period because they shared the domestication and cultivation of plants and animals, pyramidal architectural structures, the appearance of writing and seals.

What the genome of this individual indicates, even if it is only one (more would have to be sequenced to validate these conclusions), is that, most likely, Cultural exchange reflects the physical exchange of peopleThat is, ideas and innovations were transmitted because they followed the flow of people through migration and the relationship between populations. This spread and exchange of ideas and people can also explain how, in the Bronze Age, Neolithic innovation reached Anatolia from Mesopotamia, the gateway to Europe, from where plant cultivation and animal domestication, pottery, and settled populations spread.