Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest an increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods

Verena J Schuenemann,Katerina Harvati,Ella Reiter,Johannes Krause,Stephan Schiffels,Martyna Molak,W Paul Van Pelt,Chuan-Chao Wang,Wolfgang Haak,Michael Francken,Christian Urban,Anja Furtwängler,Kay Nieselt,Alexander Peltzer,Beatrix Welte,Barbara Teßmann

doi:10.1038/ncomms15694

Abstract

Egypt, located on the isthmus of Africa, is an ideal region to study historical population dynamics due to its geographic location and documented interactions with ancient civilizations in Africa, Asia and Europe. Particularly, in the first millennium BCE Egypt endured foreign domination leading to growing numbers of foreigners living within its borders possibly contributing genetically to the local population. Here we present 90 mitochondrial genomes as well as genome-wide data sets from three individuals obtained from Egyptian mummies. The samples recovered from Middle Egypt span around 1,300 years of ancient Egyptian history from the New Kingdom to the Roman Period. Our analyses reveal that ancient Egyptians shared more ancestry with Near Easterners than present-day Egyptians, who received additional sub-Saharan admixture in more recent times. This analysis establishes ancient Egyptian mummies as a genetic source to study ancient human history and offers the perspective of deciphering Egypt’s past at a genome-wide level.

Highlights

Egypt, located on the isthmus of Africa, is an ideal region to study historical population dynamics due to its geographic location and documented interactions with ancient civilizations in Africa, Asia and Europe
The analysis of ancient DNA provides a crucial piece in the puzzle of Egypt’s population history and can serve as an important corrective or supplement to inferences drawn from literary, archaeological and modern DNA data. Despite their potential to address research questions relating to population migrations, genetic studies of ancient Egyptian mummies and skeletal material remain rare, research on Egyptian mummies helped to pioneer the field of ancient DNA research with the first reported retrieval of ancient human DNA6
On a more local scale, we aim to study changes and continuities in the genetic makeup of the ancient inhabitants of the Abusir el-Meleq community (Fig. 1), since all sampled remains derive from this community in Middle Egypt and have been radiocarbon dated to the late New Kingdom to the Roman Period

Summary

Introduction

Egypt, located on the isthmus of Africa, is an ideal region to study historical population dynamics due to its geographic location and documented interactions with ancient civilizations in Africa, Asia and Europe. Until now the study of Egypt’s population history has been largely based on literary and archaeological sources and inferences drawn from genetic diversity in present-day Egyptians Both approaches have made crucial contributions to the debate but are not without limitations. The analysis of ancient DNA provides a crucial piece in the puzzle of Egypt’s population history and can serve as an important corrective or supplement to inferences drawn from literary, archaeological and modern DNA data Despite their potential to address research questions relating to population migrations, genetic studies of ancient Egyptian mummies and skeletal material remain rare, research on Egyptian mummies helped to pioneer the field of ancient DNA research with the first reported retrieval of ancient human DNA6. We provide the first reliable data set obtained from ancient Egyptians using high-throughput DNA sequencing methods and assessing the authenticity of the retrieved ancient DNA via characteristic nucleotide misincorporation patterns[13,14] and statistical contamination tests[15] to ensure the ancient origin of our obtained data

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Conclusion