Pictured is a sarcophagus of Tadja from the Abusir el-Meleq region Aegyptisches Museum/Papyrussammlung/SMB/Sandra Steiss

Egypt's location; its close links with Africa, Asia and Europe, its rich, documented history, and the preserved remains of its mummies make it the ideal testbed for the study of ancient populations. However, the accuracy of the DNA extracted from these mummies has been the subject of much scepticism.

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Although many of the first extractions of ancient DNA were from mummified remains, scientists raised doubts as to whether genetic data, especially so-called nuclear genome data, from mummies would ever be reliable, even if it could be recovered. In particular, the hot Egyptian climate, high humidity levels in tombs and chemicals used in mummification can cause DNA to degrade making long-term survival unlikely.

Now, an international team led by researchers at the University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, has recovered and analysed ancient DNA from Egyptian mummies dating from approximately 1400 BCE to 400 CE, including the first genome-wide nuclear data from three individuals. Nuclear data is significant because, at its most simple, it is inherited from all ancestors, while mitochondrial DNA stems from the maternal line only.

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"Nuclear DNA represents the full human genome and therefore contains much more information as mitochondrial DNA that covers only a small part of the human genome and represents only the maternal ancestry," author Verena Schuenemann, group leader at the University of Tübingen told [I]WIRED[/I]. "Especially for admixture and ancestry analysis, it is important to look at as many informative/variable positions in the genome as possible to obtain a complete picture."

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For this study, the authors extracted nuclear DNA from mummies found on the archaeological site of Abusir el-Meleq, along the Nile River in Middle Egypt, hosted and curated at two anthropological collections in the University of Tübingen and the Felix von Luschan Skull Collection at the Museum of Prehistory of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Stiftung Preussicher Kulturbesitz.

The tests were carried out in clean room facilities dedicated to ancient DNA research at the University of Tübingen. All samples were UV irradiated for an hour to reduce contamination and the surface of the bone or tissue samples was removed, while the teeth were sampled from inside the tooth pulp. The DNA was extracted from 50mg bone powder for bone or tooth samples and from 100mg tissue for soft tissue samples, respectively.

Researcher Verena Schuenemann is pictured with the mummified remains at the Palaeogenetics Laboratory, University of Tübingen Johannes Krause

In total, DNA extracts from tissues including bone, teeth, soft tissue and macerated teeth were screened from 151 individuals for the presence of human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). The researchers compared the resulting samples with different soft tissue, bone and teeth to filter out any that had been contaminated. This meant they could find patterns in so-called damaged ancient human DNA to allow them to assess the authenticity of the retrieved DNA.


This left the team with reliable samples from 90 individuals, and genome-wide datasets from three. From this, the team studied the genetic differentiation and population changes and continuity over a 1,300-year time span before comparing the results to modern populations.

This map of Egypt shows the archaeological site of Abusir-el Meleq (orange X), and the location of the modern Egyptian samples used in the study (orange circles) Annette Guenzel/Nature Communications

"In particular, we were interested in looking at changes and continuities in the genetic makeup of the ancient inhabitants of Abusir el-Meleq," said Alexander Peltzer, one of the lead authors of the study from the University of Tübingen. Specifically, the team wanted to see if ancient populations were affected, at the genetic level, by foreign conquest and domination during the time period.

"We wanted to test if the conquest of Alexander the Great and other foreign powers has left a genetic imprint on the ancient Egyptian population," added Schuenemann.

The results show that ancient Egyptians were most closely related to ancient populations in the Levant, as well as having close links to Neolithic populations from the Anatolian Peninsula and Europe, thus suggesting the genetics of the Abusir el-Meleq community did not undergo any major shifts. When compared with more recent DNA, the study also revealed modern Egyptians share approximately eight per cent more ancestry on the nuclear level with Sub-Saharan African populations than with Ancient Egyptians.

The principal component analysis and genetic clustering of the genome-wide DNA from three ancient Egyptians is pictured Nature Communications

"This suggests an increase in Sub-Saharan African gene flow into Egypt occurred within the last 1,500 years," said Stephan Schiffels, from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena. Possible reasons presented by the team include improved mobility down the Nile River, increased long-distance trade between Sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, and the trans-Saharan slave trade that began approximately 1,300 years ago.


"This study counters prior scepticism about the possibility of recovering reliable ancient DNA from Egyptian mummies," said the international team in a statement. "Despite the potential issues of degradation and contamination caused by climate and mummification methods, the authors were able to use high-throughput DNA sequencing and robust authentication methods to ensure the ancient origin and reliability of the data. The study thus shows that Egyptian mummies can be a reliable source of ancient DNA, and can greatly contribute to a more accurate and refined understanding of Egypt's population history."

Adding to this, Schuenemann told [I]WIRED[/I]: "With these results, we could show ancient DNA research can contribute to a better understanding of the ancient Egyptian history; it can supplement and serve as a corrective for archaeological and literary data as well the modern genetic data."

The study is published in the journal Nature Communications and also involved the University of Cambridge, the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Berlin Society of Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory.