Egyptology: it's super suspicious...

[The Dryad]

If Ancient Egyptians, prior to the arab invasion of Sudan and the rest of Africa, and prior to the invasion of the Greeks and Romans, weren't black Africans....then why did they have sky high afros that can be found in other similar, very black/African regions today...I mean... I've never seen an Arab person or a white person whose hair was course enough to do that. I know in science there's a saying that if you're biased and you go looking for something to prove your bias, you will, and that's usually the theory I hear amonst black people, but white people think it's afrocentric....to think that people with black hair and black skin tones might actually be black.

 

But it's also true that many mummies that have been found have been people with straight hair without typical African features... even without resembling the people portrayed in hieroglyphs.

 

I know Nubians (present day Sudan regions) have pyramids as well, that are much smaller, but there have been modern day arguments on whether those pyramids pre-date Egyptian ones.

 

One other thing I found interesting is the Afar Tribe near Ethiopia, whose hair reminds me of things I've seen on hieroglyphics.

 

 

 

 

 

I know Egyptians braided their hair with and without beads, which can be found all over Africa. Egyptians also called their land Kemet (land of the blacks) which apparently was named for the black soil....and not the blacks, the people, they did not csll it Egypt, i believe that came from the Greeks or Romans and more Ancient regions that might have included Egypt were Ta-Seti and Ta-Mery.

 

Meh, IDK, I know in the past history was very Eurocentric as a means of power and control, and people who win wars write history, but I don't quite believe the afrocentric mania...but some of the things they say make you extremely suspicious.

 

https://www.msafropolitan.com/2015/11/ancient-egypt-was-black-african.html

 

 

 

 

 

IDK, maybe look stuff up on your own and teach me 😂 because I'm confused.

[MightBeLonely]

Typically, they were straight-haired wigs due to the extreme heat of the desert.  They typically shaved their heads. Ramses actually had red hair (and lived into his early nineties!). Also, the kingdom was known under two parts, The Red Land, named for the people, and The Black Land, actually named for the dark mud that the Nile brought during it's flooding that was used to plant the fields. I see this confusion a lot, and have always been fascinated by the Ancient Egyptians (been studying them for decades). In antiquity, however, they more physically resembled modern Persians and those from the Middle East and the like. They've even done a full cast reproduction of King Tut's head (using his skull measurements and his DNA information) and he does, in fact, look more Middle Eastern...

 

Hope that clarifies things for you.

[MightBeLonely]

[MightBeLonely]

Not supporting any 'Euro-Centric' opinions, at all, here, just in addition. Just presenting the facts.

 

It looks like the one image you posted is of a 'prisoner' train. The Ancient Egyptians didn't keep slaves, per se, as you and I would define them (in fact, farmers waiting on their fields to grow built the pyramids, and it was considered an honor, not a punishment and they all had elaborate cemeteries), but they did keep prisoners of war. I mean, that was just a sign of the times. They were rivals with the Hittites (a Middle Eastern empire) and other empires. So that may be where some of the confusion comes from as well. The Nubians (a southern African rival who likely were darker skinned) did hold higher offices much later in Egypt's power, and that did include Pharaoh, but generally speaking, they were more Middle Eastern in appearance and, for the most part, minded their own business. Again, hope that helps. Just trying to clarify things for ya.   I'm an Egypt nerd, so ask away. I enjoy talking about them.

[Guest]

@MightBeLonely I would have so many questions for you XD 

[MightBeLonely]

Well, I'm not a card carrying Egyptologist, and I don't know everything, but shoot! King Tut and I have been involved for about the last twenty years. lol

[The Dryad]

It makes the most amount of sense for Egyptians to look more middle eastern considering migration patterns from North Africa, especially when you consider the similar amount of diversity in Morocco (considering Berbers and Moors in that region) and I'm not debating that- even in antiquity, but what is "antiquity" anyways when history is often skewed by one viewpoint and not likely that these archeologists (mostly white people) will ask natives, let alone speak the language, "where do you come from", but rather try to "find out" through their own skewed version of whatever they want to prove, when natives often know their own history, and it's not "antiquity" to them, and if one of the videos' quotes are to be believed, the why did Egyptians use Nubians characters, if they weren't descendants of Nubians (and Nubians culture)- but we're rather 'inter-married/allied' with Nubians, especially when Nubian is older than Egypt. The Ptolemaic Kingdoms of Egypt (Greek ruled) and Aegyptus (Roman ruled) and then the Arab conquest are what I mostly hear about besides Ramses....Ramesses? And that doesn't exactly explain why "the black mummy" from Libya exists (which is apparently much older than the oldest Egyptian mummies) if "Egyptian culture" is it's own and it was made solely by Egyptians. From what we know about human migration patterns and the cradle of mankind- near Ethiopia, it makes the most sense that black people were there first and Arab/Middle Easterners who became Egyptians came in an early wave of conquest- rather than being born there as an African if DNA tests are to be believed.

[uhtred]

The modern idea of race isn't really based on genetics.  I believe there is substantially more genetic diversity among people generally considered "black", than there is difference between that group and any others. 

 

Why this matters is that  whatever the Egyptians were, it may not map well onto any particular modern race. Human populations move, change, intermingle, separate.  It may not make sense to try to identify the "race" of a group from 5000 years ago.   We can probably say things about their genetics, but noit really the race. 

 

As an interesting tidbit, in ancient Egyptian art,  men are often depicted as very dark skinned, and women as very light skinned. Clearly their art is not directly representing reality, but probably instead is capturing what *they* thought was important. 

 

As an aside, Europe was not very important until Rome, but then faded into obscurity again until the age of exploration.   For most of history Europe has not been the center of civilization.  More often than not, that has been China. (though there have been advanced civilizations in many areas that at various times have been world leaders). 

[The Dryad]

15 hours ago, uhtred said:

The modern idea of race isn't really based on genetics.  I believe there is substantially more genetic diversity among people generally considered "black", than there is difference between that group and any others. 

 

Why this matters is that  whatever the Egyptians were, it may not map well onto any particular modern race. Human populations move, change, intermingle, separate.  It may not make sense to try to identify the "race" of a group from 5000 years ago.   We can probably say things about their genetics, but noit really the race. 

 

As an interesting tidbit, in ancient Egyptian art,  men are often depicted as very dark skinned, and women as very light skinned. Clearly their art is not directly representing reality, but probably instead is capturing what *they* thought was important. 

 

As an aside, Europe was not very important until Rome, but then faded into obscurity again until the age of exploration.   For most of history Europe has not been the center of civilization.  More often than not, that has been China. (though there have been advanced civilizations in many areas that at various times have been world leaders). 

This is true, however you can't discount that Egyptians also depicted dark skinned women with hair textures that middle eastern people usually don't have

 

 

It is true that it's hard to identify the race of people so old, and there was some suspicion of DNA being deposited into bones when they were found, but I don't think that's a true concern.

 

There's also the Nubians that were conquered by Egypt.

 

 

 

 

[The Dryad]

Red hair can be found in black creoles everywhere especially Louisiana, and in certain tribes in Africa (not using red ochre) and people on Solomon Island can have blonde and red hair with blue eyes. Just saying.

 

So it's completely possible that Egyptians depicted themselves fairly accurately, who knows what the green skinned priests and such were about...

 

 

I definitely want to learn more about Ta-Seti (Kush) considering it came way before Egypt.

[uhtred]

1 hour ago, The Dryad said:

This is true, however you can't discount that Egyptians also depicted dark skinned women with hair textures that middle eastern people usually don't have

 

 

It is true that it's hard to identify the race of people so old, and there was some suspicion of DNA being deposited into bones when they were found, but I don't think that's a true concern.

 

There's also the Nubians that were conquered by Egypt.

 

 

 

 

Yes.  I haven't looked at whether the depictions of light-skinned women were from one area (Ancient Egypt covered a lot of distance along the Nile), or maybe from different periods of history (it lasted ~2000 years).  Its even possible that there was significant ethnic mixing and that it wasn't considered important to them (any more than blond vs dark hair is considered important now).   Also can't rule out cosmetics to change skin color (in unknown ways) being used differently as styles changed. 

[MightBeLonely]

Egypt reaches back quite a bit further than that, actually. They predate most other ancient empires in history, with traces found at 5,000 BCE. 

• Antiquities, objects or artifacts surviving from ancient cultures, so you can define the word around that.

[Karst]

It seems like a reasonable hypothesis that Ancient Egyptians looked more or less like the contemporary inhabitants of northern Africa and the Mediterranean, and their art would seem to back up that idea.

 

On a related note, we tend to forget that the ancient Greeks and Romans weren't as light-skinned as most Europeans.  Modern-day Greece and Italy are the southernmost parts of Europe, so people there tend to be closer to olive than translucent. 

[Alawyn-Aebt]

The Kushites and Nubians were not the same ethnically as Egyptians and are seen as near-universally Black. The XXVth Dynasty was also Black as it was a Kushite Dynasty. I believe we have ancient texts that describe the Kushites/Nubians as black in comparison to the ancient Egyptians. While the ancient Egyptians were certainly not white in the way one living in the United States might think today they were lighter than the ancient Egyptians.

7 hours ago, The Dryad said:

 

Interestingly there are clearly two different skin tones shown in this fresco, implying again that they were two different races, implying possibly two different ethnicities.

The ancient Egyptians also would bring up concubines from Kush, making me wonder if that is not what this fresco is.

8 hours ago, The Dryad said:

 

 

They are certainly rich by them playing musical instruments and so definitely higher up on the highly stratified Egyptian Socio-Economic ladder.

 

Nubian "Alphabet" also does not pre-date Egyptian Hieroglyphics and in based off it, not vice-versa.

On 1/3/2019 at 6:16 PM, The Dryad said:

if "Egyptian culture" is it's own and it was made solely by Egyptians.

No culture is truly it's own.

 

Now I am not an Eygptologist, and my focus all throughout college has been towards more modern history, so I may have messed up on something.

[The Dryad]

1 hour ago, Aebt said:

No culture is truly it's own.

There are absolutely peoples whose culture belongs solely to them.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1987/10/11/the-black-roots-of-egypts-glory/1c3faf74-331c-4cc1-a6a0-3535fa3e098a/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e1ad54db1fea

 

If Egyptians were Greek/Mediterranean then why do they not depict themselves as they have depicted Greeks in Hieroglyphics, then if Herodotus and Didorus Siculus were both liars, then why did they (the Egyptians) wear African wigs/hair with typical African styling (beadwork, plating, twists, braids), when they could have only worn their straight haired wigs.... especially if they were not descendants of Nubia. It makes much more sense that Egyptians were middle eastern invaders who intermarried into some African peoples and warred with others, except they still depict themselves much darker than middle eastern groups the warred with and allied with, depicting Assyrians as "white" and Jews as a similar skin tone or a bit tanner, but never as tan as Egyptians. In quite a few Greek and Roman depictions they tell of Egyptians being Ethiopian, as "Ethiopian" or Aethiopian became synonymous with "African person" or "black person".

 

Going a different way, Ethiopian art looks quite similar to Egyptians, especially skin tones, it's definitely curious...

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Most pictures were from the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible)

[uhtred]

9 hours ago, MightBeLonely said:

Egypt reaches back quite a bit further than that, actually. They predate most other ancient empires in history, with traces found at 5,000 BCE. 

• Antiquities, objects or artifacts surviving from ancient cultures, so you can define the word around that.

Depends on when you consider the "starting".    Unification was about 3000BC.  I agree that they are one of the earliest large civilizations,  along with the Sumerians.  There were a number of earlier cultures, depends on where  you draw the line for "kingdom", but they were very early.

[Alawyn-Aebt]

11 hours ago, The Dryad said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1987/10/11/the-black-roots-of-egypts-glory/1c3faf74-331c-4cc1-a6a0-3535fa3e098a/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e1ad54db1fea

Off-topic, but there are a ton of racists in that article. Reading that makes me want to prove them wrong, and show the Egyptians to be black-skinned, but sadly I just don't see the evidence for it.

11 hours ago, The Dryad said:

If Egyptians were Greek/Mediterranean then why do they not depict themselves as they have depicted Greeks in Hieroglyphics

Egyptian art was very stylized and can be divided into many style periods, if you choose a style period and focus on that you can find things that may imply black African, but if you look at Egyptian artworks as a whole you realize it is all super stylized and none can really be taken at face value. Look up the differences between statues of Khufu (Cheops) of the IV Dynasty and Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) of the XVIII Dynasty. Oddly after Akhenaten the style changes back towards the earlier styles such as that of Khufu and his successors reigns. Also the Egyptians were most definitely not Greek, although it is thought (with evidence) that ancient Egyptians were light-skinned, it is relative. So they were light in comparison to Nubians, but possibly they were darker than Greeks though.

11 hours ago, The Dryad said:

In quite a few Greek and Roman depictions they tell of Egyptians being Ethiopian, as "Ethiopian" or Aethiopian became synonymous with "African person" or "black person".

Very true, but by the time the Greeks and Romans really start getting to know Egypt is has long since already started getting, I guess one would call it, "blacker". Since the Nubian Dynasty (XXV) and the conquest of Egypt by the Nubians it is though they left behind a legacy of a mixing of skin-tones.

 

Very interesting regarding the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible though, my guess would be that because Christianity reached Ethiopia via it's successor state Axum (Aksum) which had major connections via trade routes to the Arabian Peninsula and onward towards the old cities of Mesopotamia and other cities of the Near East that their idea regarding the skin-tone of biblical people was influenced by that.

 

[The Dryad]

@Aebt yeah, it's all pretty interesting overall.

 

But there are some historical inconsistencies, or at the least things that aren't mentioned in Egyptian and Nubian relations, it's implied that Egyptians are the creators of Nilo culture, but again "the black mummy" Uan Muhuggiag, dates to around 5600 BC, in modern day Libya, a mummy that was sophisticated and a representative of pre-Egypt Africans, around 1,000 years older than Egyptian mummies- yet black people didn't have an empire/advanced civilization older than Egypt in the Nile region? To me, that doesn't make sense.

 

My theory on skin tones is.... probably most people actually looked like that- Ethiopians themselves look like the people they depict (ranging from very light to dark, similar to the way Egyptians depict themselves), as far a biblical people- alot of intermarriage happened and most likely warring, and it's probably not a far shot to guess that they were as "mixed" Nilo people's, I mean, look at how confusing Berbers and Moors are. In fact, to me it might be that they had a different way of looking at "race" than we do modernly.

 

 

P.S. The racists are always annoying, I recently read a YouTube comment that said "black Africans didn't build a two story building until the 1900, they can thank white people for that", I was like....wow. 

[Karst]

The ancient Romans also viewed race very differently than we do now.  (I realize that this may be off-topic, but it's one of my areas of expertise, so here goes.)  They didn't have any pseudo-scientific ideas about geographical groups, so their way of seeing the world divided people by things like tribe and citizenship, not dubious biology.

 

So, this would provide some indirect evidence that other ancient peoples didn't have the same ideas about race as us moderns.

 

[The Dryad]

Thanks for defining antiquity, but...stop defining antiquity it was a rhetorical question.

[Alawyn-Aebt]

5 hours ago, The Dryad said:

But there are some historical inconsistencies, or at the least things that aren't mentioned in Egyptian and Nubian relations, it's implied that Egyptians are the creators of Nilo culture, but again "the black mummy" Uan Muhuggiag, dates to around 5600 BC, in modern day Libya, a mummy that was sophisticated and a representative of pre-Egypt Africans, around 1,000 years older than Egyptian mummies- yet black people didn't have an empire/advanced civilization older than Egypt in the Nile region? To me, that doesn't make sense.

Yes, sadly people often look at ancient Egypt as this whole independently evolved culture, and while certainly their language and writing system is very different for their contemporaries such as Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hittites, that does not mean they were not influenced by the cultures around them and predating them. I really think no culture is wholly unique. Just like inventions are mostly innovations, someone didn't invent the car, the innovated on motors and wheels, those were innovated from..., so forth and so on.

 

The "Black Mummy" is interesting, I don't know enough about it to know if it was mummified by a similar process to Egyptian mummies or like the Incan mummies, developed through independent innovations (unless you solidly believe Thor Heyerdahl's explanation of Incan mummies, which while interesting and hypothetically possible, does lack evidence for the sort of activities necessary to bring about it).

 

My guess would be that black Africans had an, for the time, advanced civilization also predating Egyptians, but sadly Egyptians and their contemporaries started writing things down, something cultures and societies previously did not do.

 

Your theory on skin-tones does make possible sense, only problem is the Berbers and Moors did take quite a while until the really fully intermingled.

 

2 hours ago, Ardoise said:

The ancient Romans also viewed race very differently than we do now.  (I realize that this may be off-topic, but it's one of my areas of expertise, so here goes.)  They didn't have any pseudo-scientific ideas about geographical groups, so their way of seeing the world divided people by things like tribe and citizenship, not dubious biology.

 

So, this would provide some indirect evidence that other ancient peoples didn't have the same ideas about race as us moderns.

Race as it is viewed in the USA is very different from race in, say Brazil. In the USA it is all based off skin colour, while in Brazil it tends to be based off of material wealth. Probably this is because Brazilians had a much greater number of racial categories, having dozens which they divided people into. Originally they were based off skin colour but eventually it became based more off of material wealth. There are some really neat Anthropological studies done on this if you find it fascinating reading how Brazilians classify an black man dressed very formally as white, while classifying a poor lighter-skinned Indigenous Brazilian living in a slum sewer as black.

 

Ancient people definitely had a different notion of race, if they truly had any notion at all, but work among isolated Amazonian and Papuan tribes have taught us that even if they don't have races in the same way we do, they can still be "racist" (think suspicious, distrusting, seeing themselves as superior, etc.) towards both fellow tribes and outsiders.

[The Dryad]

1 hour ago, Aebt said:

Yes, sadly people often look at ancient Egypt as this whole independently evolved culture, and while certainly their language and writing system is very different for their contemporaries such as Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hittites, that does not mean they were not influenced by the cultures around them and predating them. I really think no culture is wholly unique. Just like inventions are mostly innovations, someone didn't invent the car, the innovated on motors and wheels, those were innovated from..., so forth and so on.

 

The "Black Mummy" is interesting, I don't know enough about it to know if it was mummified by a similar process to Egyptian mummies or like the Incan mummies, developed through independent innovations (unless you solidly believe Thor Heyerdahl's explanation of Incan mummies, which while interesting and hypothetically possible, does lack evidence for the sort of activities necessary to bring about it).

 

My guess would be that black Africans had an, for the time, advanced civilization also predating Egyptians, but sadly Egyptians and their contemporaries started writing things down, something cultures and societies previously did not do.

 

Your theory on skin-tones does make possible sense, only problem is the Berbers and Moors did take quite a while until the really fully intermingled.

 

Race as it is viewed in the USA is very different from race in, say Brazil. In the USA it is all based off skin colour, while in Brazil it tends to be based off of material wealth. Probably this is because Brazilians had a much greater number of racial categories, having dozens which they divided people into. Originally they were based off skin colour but eventually it became based more off of material wealth. There are some really neat Anthropological studies done on this if you find it fascinating reading how Brazilians classify an black man dressed very formally as white, while classifying a poor lighter-skinned Indigenous Brazilian living in a slum sewer as black.

 

Ancient people definitely had a different notion of race, if they truly had any notion at all, but work among isolated Amazonian and Papuan tribes have taught us that even if they don't have races in the same way we do, they can still be "racist" (think suspicious, distrusting, seeing themselves as superior, etc.) towards both fellow tribes and outsiders.

I was actually thinking about Brazilians- but more about their mixed races, which reminds me of South Africa's "colored" classification, which meant mixed children and families who couldn't live with either black or white people, or Indian people. Throughout the Americas though, these people are called "mulattos" or Creoles, however Jane Landers use of Atlantic Creoles are probably more appropriate when referring to anyone of African descent in Pan-African Americas.

 

In the US, it used to be common that wealthy black people would be listed as white as well (like Sarah Rector), which is probably where Brazilians got the notion from.

 

I know it's off topic from Egyptian stuff, but it's always interesting to see how ancient humans saw "others".

 

I know prejudice varied tribe to tribe everywhere, but if the video above is to be believed Egyptians coined "Kush" as a derogatory name for the descendants of Ta-Seti who rivalled them. 

[The Dryad]

1 hour ago, Aebt said:

The "Black Mummy" is interesting, I don't know enough about it to know if it was mummified by a similar process to Egyptian mummies or like the Incan mummies, developed through independent innovations (unless you solidly believe Thor Heyerdahl's explanation of Incan mummies, which while interesting and hypothetically possible, does lack evidence for the sort of activities necessary to bring about it).

From what I've heard, the black mummy was preserved fairly similarly to Egyptian mummies-which is why it's speculated that Egyptians adopted Nubian practices, not the other way around.

 

But there are mummies all over the world, Yemen, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Australia, Germany....India especially is interesting, mummy culture might just be a thing humans like?

 

As far as Incan mummies- I'm fairly unstudied on them, so I'll only hestitate to speculate, but considering that Egyptians sailed, it's not a stretch to imagine them being in contact with South Americans or any of the Island natives, especially considering the presence of cocaine and tobacco in tombs, which are native to the Americas. The King before Mansa Musa, Abubakri sailed to the New World (he might've reached the islands, or Brazil, but he also might've been shipwrecked, but there's always the mysterious statue) and also Papua New Guineans who sailed- not just Asians and Europeans were smart enough to navigate waters....

[Alawyn-Aebt]

20 minutes ago, The Dryad said:

it's not a stretch to imagine them being in contact with South Americans or any of the Island natives, especially considering the presence of cocaine and tobacco in tombs, which are native to the Americas. The King before Mansa Musa, Abubakri sailed to the New World (he might've reached the islands, or Brazil, but he also might've been shipwrecked, but there's always the mysterious statue) and also Papua New Guineans who sailed- not just Asians and Europeans were smart enough to navigate waters

It is not at all, that is what makes Thor Heyerdahl's ideas so compelling, and I will give him credit for testing them under period conditions, something many do not. Certainly the ancient peoples of the world had the technology for cross-oceanic voyages, as Heyerdahl proved, but we don't have a whole body of evidence supporting that they did it. Certainly if they did it at all it was not regular, sustained trans-oceanic voyages; otherwise one would feel there would be written evidence for them or more obvious evidence. Sadly, from a good story perspective, we don't have that evidence at the moment.

 

Again, going back to everyone innovating on top of everyone else, just because you have the motor and the wheel does not mean you have a car, just because you have the ships capable of it does not mean you have regular trans-oceanic voyages.

 

I will say though the Egyptian records do describe an African Circumnavigation undertaken by them, so that is an interesting bit that needs further study.

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

Recent reports of previously undiscovered tombs in the valley of the Kings might yield some interesting DNA studies.

[The Dryad]

@chandrakirti I'll look into it, thanks 💜, it sounds really interesting, but I doubt it'll be anything new...but maybe.

[daveb]

What, if anything, have any previous dna tests shown in this regard? (I'm not really up on Egyptology)

 

(I believe some dna testing of ancient human remains in Britain show the person/s had dark skin and blue eyes. Nothing to do with Egyptians, but shows dna testing can answer some questions about such things.  )

[Sally]

DNA testing can predict/determine eye and hair color at a confidence of about 50%.  What Ancestry and other companies can tell you is the geographical origins of your ancestors -- i.e., your DNA is similar to that of a group(s) of people who lived in Eastern Europe, for example.  There are certain groups of humans who have lived in one geographical area over long periods of time.  One of those is the Ashkenzim, a group of Jews who left Israel soon after the  Roman War and pushed east, until they reached Poland/Russia, where they concentrated and didn't intermarry with non-Jews.  Thus, there have developed biological/medical conditions which are concentrated in Ashkenazim (breast cancer genes in women, various other serious disease conditions).  Non-intermarriage among Blacks also concentrated the sickle cell condition.   

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

Just lifted from Wikipedia...

 

Contamination from handling and intrusion from microbes create obstacles to the recovery of ancient DNA.^[1] Consequently, most DNA studies have been carried out on modern Egyptian populations with the intent of learning about the influences of historical migrations on the population of Egypt.^[2][3][4][5] A study published in 1993 was performed on ancient mummies of the 12th Dynasty, which identified multiple lines of descent.^[6]

In 2013, Khairat et al. conducted the first genetic study utilizing next-generation sequencing to ascertain the ancestral lineage of an Ancient Egyptian individual. The researchers extracted DNA from the heads of five Egyptian mummies that were housed at the institution. All the specimens were dated to between 806 BCE and 124 CE, a timeframe corresponding with the Late Dynastic and Ptolemaic periods. The researchers observed that one of the mummified individuals likely belonged to the mtDNA haplogroup I2, a maternal clade that is believed to have originated in Western Asia.^[7]

A study published in 2017 described the extraction and analysis of DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were recovered from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. Obtaining well-preserved, uncontaminated DNA from mummies has been a problem for the field of archaeogenetics and these samples provided "the first reliable data set obtained from ancient Egyptians using high-throughput DNA sequencing methods". The specimens were living in a period stretching from the late New Kingdom to the Roman era (1388 BCE–426 CE). Complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences were obtained for 90 of the mummies and were compared with each other and with several other ancient and modern datasets. The scientists found that the ancient Egyptian individuals in their own dataset possessed highly similar mitochondrial profiles throughout the examined period. Modern Egyptians generally shared this maternal haplogroup pattern, but also carried more Sub-Saharan African clades. However, analysis of the mummies' mtDNA haplogroups found that they shared greater mitochondrial affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant compared to modern Egyptians. Additionally, three of the ancient Egyptian individuals were analysed for Y-DNA, two were assigned to the Middle-Eastern haplogroup J and one to haplogroup E1b1b1 common in North Africa. The researchers cautioned that the affinities of the examined ancient Egyptian specimens may not be representative of those of all ancient Egyptians since they were from a single archaeological site.^[8]

Blood typing and ancient DNA sampling on Egyptian mummies is scant. However, blood typing of Dynastic period mummies found their ABO frequencies to be most similar to that of modern Egyptians.^[9]

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

Also:

 

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100216-king-tut-malaria-bones-inbred-tutankhamun/