Everything we've learnt from first DNA of ancient Egyptian

Telegraph

4 days ago

The first complete DNA study of an Ancient Egyptian has revealed he was probably a celebrated potter who was given an oddly luxurious burial.
The skeleton of a middle-aged man, who lived between 4,500 and 4,800 years ago, was found crammed into a ceramic pot in a tomb cut into the hillside at Nuwayrat, around 165 miles south of Cairo.
He lived during the Fourth Dynasty, an important time when the first and greatest pyramids were constructed, under the reign of pharaohs such as Khufu and Khafre.
Until now it has been difficult to sequence DNA in Ancient Egyptians because the mummification process destroys the delicate molecule. However, the man's burial took place before mummification became standard practice in Egypt and his body was instead preserved by the warm and dry conditions of the desert.
This allowed British experts from the Francis Crick Institute and Liverpool John Moores University to extract DNA from a tooth root.
The remains showed severe signs of arthritis and suggested he had spent many years sitting on a hard surface with his arms and legs outstretched and his head bent over.
Joel Irish, professor of dental anthropology and archaeology at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) said: 'Though circumstantial, these clues point towards pottery, including use of a pottery wheel, which arrived in Egypt around the same time.
'That said, his higher-class burial is not expected for a potter, who would not normally receive such treatment.
'He was in an upper class burial. Someone went to all the work to put him in a rock cut tomb and he was in this large pottery vessel. That is at odds with the fact he had an incredibly hard physical life.
'Perhaps he was exceptionally skilled or successful enough to advance his social status.'
The man's DNA showed that most of his ancestry came from North Africa, but around 20 per cent was related to ancient individuals from the Fertile Crescent – an area of West Asia encompassing modern-day countries such as Iraq, Iran and Jordan.
While archaeological evidence has shown that trade and cultural connections existed between Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, this is the first evidence that populations were also interbreeding.
Researchers have speculated that the man may have been one of the first to use a pottery wheel, which was invented in Mesopotamia and then brought to Egypt by the Fourth Dynasty. Before that pots were made with the coiled method, so it is possible his high status at death was linked to his ability to use the new technology.
His skeleton was excavated in 1902 and donated to World Museum Liverpool, where it later survived bombings during the Blitz that destroyed most of the museum's human remains collection.
'Extraordinary'
Linus Girdland Flink, a lecturer in ancient biomolecules at the University of Aberdeen and visiting researcher at LJMU said: 'This individual has been on an extraordinary journey. He lived and died during a critical period of change in ancient Egypt.
'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 the mixture between groups at this time.'
Adeline Morez Jacobs, visiting research fellow at LJMU, added: 'This finding was quite interesting because we know from archaeology that Egyptian and fertile crescent culture influenced each other for millennia. Farming practices and precious goods were shared and the first writing system emerged almost contemporaneously influenced by each other.
'Piecing together all the clues from this individual's DNA, bones and teeth have allowed us to build a comprehensive picture.'