Ancient Egyptian Mummy Reveals Moroccan Origins, Rewrites History of Pharaohs

For the first time, scientists have managed to sequence the complete genome of an individual who lived between 2855 and 2570 before our era. These genetic analyses revealed that nearly 78% of the DNA of this ancient Egyptian is close to that of the Neolithic populations of Morocco, particularly the Skhirat-Rouazi site, located on the Atlantic coast. The remaining 22% are linked to Neolithic Mesopotamia, including present-day Iraq and its neighboring regions. The man, measuring about 1.60 m, lived between 44 and 64 years and showed signs of intense joint aging, the study specifies.

This unprecedented discovery is shaking up the certainties about the origin of the first Egyptians. According to the researchers, the body of this Egyptian ancestor had been buried more than 4,500 years ago, in a large funerary jar at the bottom of a tomb dug into the rock, a ritual reserved for the elites of the time. This study reveals a continuity of North Africa from the Neolithic to the Egypt of the pharaohs, "but above all much older transregional migratory flows than we thought." "It was not just exchanges of objects or animals, but humans also traveled and settled."

The peculiarity of this study is "the exceptional quality of DNA preservation," probably due to the conditions in which it was buried. The researchers also compared this genome to that of Egyptian individuals from the 3rd Intermediate Period (787–544 BC) and to the genomes of contemporary Egyptians, revealing Ethiopian and sub-Saharan African origins.