Genetic history of Egypt
Egyptologist Barry Kemp has noted that DNA studies can only provide firm conclusions about the population of ancient Egypt if the sample results are of a significant number of individuals and represent a broad geographical and chronological range.
[3] In another study by the same authors in 2020, which once again deals with the paternal lineage of Ramesses III and the "Unknown Man E" (possibly Pentawer), E1b1a shows its highest frequencies in modern West African populations (~80%) and Central Africa (~60%).
[4] A study published in 2017 by Schuenemann et al. extracted DNA from 151 Egyptian mummies, whose remains were recovered from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt.
The ancient Egyptian individuals in their own dataset possessed highly similar mtDNA haplogroup profiles, and cluster together, supporting genetic continuity across the 1,300-year transect.
[7] Verena Schuenemann and the authors of this study suggest a high level of genetic interaction with the Near East since ancient times, probably going back to Prehistoric Egypt although the oldest mummies at the site were from the New Kingdom: "Our data seem to indicate close admixture and affinity at a much earlier date, which is unsurprising given the long and complex connections between Egypt and the Middle East.
These connections date back to Prehistory and occurred at a variety of scales, including overland and maritime commerce, diplomacy, immigration, invasion and deportation".
In 2020, Stuart Tyson Smith, professor of anthropology at UC Santa Barbara, stated: "Additionally, they are oblivious to the fact that the mouth of the Faiyum Oasis, where the sample was located, is well known, through historical documents, as an area where Middle Eastern people, like the Sherden, were settled as a reward for military service, during the late New Kingdom, about 1300 to 1070 BCE.
He also drew attention to the fact that the authors draw inference on migrations in line with their Bayesian statistical approach rather than integrate other data into their explanations about the population history.
[2] In 2023, the Afro-Centrist Christopher Ehret argued that the conclusions of the 2017 study were based on insufficiently small sample sizes, and that the authors had a biased interpretation of the genetic data.
The SNP identities were consistent with mtDNA haplogroup M1a1 with 88.05–91.27% degree of confidence, thus "confirming the African origins of the two individuals" according to the study authors, based on their maternal lineage.
[31] A study on male child mummies from the Greco-Roman period originating in the Memphite or Luxor area, revealed that the mtDNA for one was T2c1a and the other HV.
Identical or phylogenetically close derivatives of these lineages are present in both ancient and modern Egyptians, as well as among several present-day populations of the Near East and North Africa.
[32] A 2020 study by Gad, Hawass, et al. analysed mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal haplogroups from Tutankhamun's family members of the 18th Dynasty, using comprehensive control procedures to ensure quality results.
[34] The Y-chromosome profiles for Tutankhamun and Amenhotep III were incomplete and the analysis produced differing probability figures despite having concordant allele results.
[35] The study states that “the H super-haplogroup is the most common mtDNA lineage in Europe and is found also in parts of present-day Africa and western Asia”.
[36] In 2020, three mummies, dating from the 1st millennium BCE, from the Pushkin Museum of Arts collection were tested at the Kurchatov Institute of Moscow for their mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal haplogroups.
[34] The study found that "Egypt's NRY frequency distributions appear to be much more similar to those of the Middle East than to any sub-Saharan African population, suggesting a much larger Eurasian genetic component ...
[51] In addition, some studies suggest ties with populations in the Middle East, as well as some groups in southern Europe,[43] and a closer link to other North Africans.
[52] A 2005 genetic study found close affinities of eastern sub-Saharan populations with Egypt in the phylogenetic trees through analysis of the short DNA sequences.
The authors suggested that the influential role of the Nile River served as a migratory route and an agent of genetic flow which contributed to present-day heterogeneity in Egypt.
[57][58] The pattern of diversity for these variants in the Egyptian Nile Valley was largely the product of population events that occurred in the late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene through the First Dynasty.
The study determined that similarity of the Nubian and Egyptian populations suggested that migration, potentially bidirectional, occurred along the Nile river Valley, which is consistent with the historical evidence for long-term interactions between Egypt and Nubia.
[61] A Nov 2023 study by Hammarén et al isolated the non-african parts of the genomes of modern day northeast Africans found that Sudanese Copts and Egyptian muslims from Cairo bore most similarities to Levantines, unlike other populations in the region which had predominant genetic contributions from the Arabian peninsula rather than Levant for their Non-African genetic component.
The study overall points that the distribution of Eurasian ancestry in modern Eastern and Northeast Africa is the result of more recent migrations, many of which are recorded in historical texts rather than ancient one.
It is suggested that the pattern of diversity for these variants in the Egyptian Nile Valley was largely the product of population events that occurred in the late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene through the First Dynasty".
They further elaborated that “The peoples of the Egyptian and northern Sudanese Nile valley, and supra-Saharan Africa now speak Arabic in the main, but as noted, this largely represents language shift.
In 2009 mitochondrial data was sequenced for 277 unrelated Egyptian individuals[70] by Jessica L Saunier et al. in the journal Forensic Science International, as follows including M (6.9%) Mohamed, T et al. (2009) in their study of nomadic Bedouins featured a comparative study with a worldwide population database and a sample size of 153 Bedouin males.
According to the study, the presence of haplogroup B may also be consistent with the historical record in which southern Egypt was colonized by Nilotic populations during the early state formation.
[76] A 2015 study by Dobon et al. identified an ancestral autosomal component of West Eurasian origin that is common to many modern Afroasiatic-speaking populations in Northeast Africa.
Assuming greater number of clusters (K≥18), the Copts formed their own separate ancestry component that was shared with Egyptians but can also be found in Arab populations.
