The First Old Kingdom Genome Study: The Genetic Roots of Ancient Egypt

This article below is a summary for a novice reader to grasp, for the full study, read here.

The Genome of NUE001, an Old Kingdom Egyptian from Nuwayrat

For centuries, the story of Ancient Egypt has been reconstructed from stone, art, and text. Temples, tombs, reliefs, and inscriptions have long been our primary witnesses. In 2025, however, a new kind of evidence quietly joined them: DNA. In a landmark study published in Nature, scientists successfully sequenced the first complete genome from an Egyptian who lived during the Old Kingdom; more than 4,500 years ago, in the age when pyramids were still new on the horizon. This was not a sensational or speculative study, but a careful scientific confirmation of ideas Egyptologists have held for decades.

The aim of this particular study was straightforward but unprecedented: to sequence the entire genome of a person who lived during Egypt’s Old Kingdom. Until now, genetic research in Egypt had relied mostly on later mummies from the New Kingdom, Ptolemaic, or Roman periods and often only partial DNA, such as maternal lineages. Recovering a full genome from such an early period had long been considered nearly impossible, due to Egypt’s hot and dry climate, which rapidly degrades DNA. That this genome survived at all is a scientific achievement in itself.

What is a Genome?

DNA is the molecule found in every cell of the body that carries biological instructions; how a body grows, functions, and maintains itself. A genome is the complete set of that DNA: the full biological blueprint of an individual. While DNA cannot tell us what language someone spoke or which gods they worshipped, it can reveal biological ancestry and genetic relationships between ancient populations. In archaeology, this allows us to trace long-term human connections that objects alone cannot fully explain.

The Study

The research was conducted by an international team of geneticists and archaeologists specialising in ancient DNA, led by Adeline Morez Jacobs and colleagues.

Their expertise lies in extracting and analysing extremely fragile genetic material, often reduced to tiny fragments after thousands of years. The individual they studied, known in the research as NUE001, was buried at Nuwayrat in Middle Egypt and lived between roughly 2855 and 2570 B.C., firmly within the Old Kingdom.

He was a man, likely non-elite, and not a king or member of the royal family; an important detail, as it means his genome reflects an ordinary Egyptian life rather than an exceptional one.

What the Study Revealed

When the genome was analysed, the results were both striking and closely aligned with long-standing Egyptological models. Approximately 78 percent of NUE001’s ancestry clustered most closely with ancient North African populations, particularly Neolithic groups from north-west and north-central Africa (broadly corresponding to present-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and the central Saharan zone). These affinities reflect deep population continuity within North Africa and the northern and central Egyptian Nile corridor, where the early Egyptian state emerged.

The remaining approximately 22 percent of his ancestry showed clear genetic connections to populations from the eastern Fertile Crescent, including regions associated with ancient Mesopotamia and the Levant. These connections are consistent with early Holocene and Neolithic population movements between North Africa and West Asia, rather than later historical migrations.

Importantly, this genetic profile does not indicate sudden migration, invasion, or conquest during the Old Kingdom. Instead, it reflects long-term population movement and gradual admixture that had already taken place well before the formation of Egypt’s dynastic civilisation. By the time NUE001 lived, these Near Eastern genetic components were already fully integrated into the local population.

For Egyptologists, this finding is significant because it directly supports decades of archaeological evidence. Early Egypt was demonstrably connected to the wider Near Eastern world through trade, shared technologies, and the movement of ideas. Domesticated plants and animals, pottery traditions, administrative practices, and long-distance exchange routes all attest to contact with the Levant and Fertile Crescent from Egypt’s earliest phases.

What this genome demonstrates, for the first time at such an early date, is that these connections were not merely cultural or commercial. Human movement accompanied them: people from neighbouring regions settled, intermarried, and became part of Egypt’s population long before the Old Kingdom, something that had previously been inferred but not genetically confirmed.

At the same time, the study makes equally clear that Ancient Egypt was not a colony of the Near East, nor a civilisation imported wholesale from elsewhere. The dominant component of NUE001’s ancestry reflects long-standing population continuity within North Africa and Egypt, with Near Eastern gene flow already absorbed by the Old Kingdom. There is no evidence here for population replacement or later intrusion.

In genetic terms, Egypt emerges as a civilisation formed by indigenous North African populations of the northern Nile corridor, shaped by early admixture with neighbouring regions to the east, particularly the Levant and eastern Fertile Crescent, and already embedded within a broader interconnected ancient world. It was neither isolated nor displaced, but a civilisation whose population history was complex, ancient, and locally rooted.

What to Remember

The authors are careful to emphasise the limits of their work. This genome represents a single individual, from one region, at one moment in time. Naturally, it does not define all Ancient Egyptians, nor does it map neatly onto modern concepts of race or identity. DNA cannot explain culture, belief, or language, and it should never be used to oversimplify the past. What it can do, however, is anchor long-standing historical models in biological evidence.

In the wider context of Egyptian genetic history, this Old Kingdom genome fits remarkably well. When compared with later ancient DNA studies, it supports the idea of strong population continuity across millennia, with additional genetic input occurring gradually rather than through sudden upheaval. Later increases in Sub-Saharan African (populations south of the Sahara) ancestry appear to have taken place primarily after antiquity, while Near Eastern and Arabian-related genetic components (meaning prehistoric populations of the eastern Mediterranean and Arabian Peninsula long before modern Arab identity or language) were already present in Egypt from its earliest periods. In this sense, Egypt was ancient, indigenous, connected, and enduring.

And so, for the first time, we can look at an Ancient Egyptian who lived when the pyramids were rising and say that we know something real about his biological origins; not just how he was buried or what gods he honoured, but how deeply Egypt was already woven into the ancient world and the blood of it’s peoples.

This study, therefore, does not rewrite Egyptian history. It confirms it quietly, precisely, and scientifically.

Below, YouTuber Metatron offers a clear and accessible discussion of the study, presenting its findings in a way that is easy to follow.

The Man Behind the Genome

Behind the statistics and genetic models was a real person. The individual known to researchers as NUE001 was discovered at Nuwayrat, a burial site in Middle Egypt. His remains were found not in a monumental tomb, but placed within a large ceramic vessel, known as a jar burial; a practice attested in certain periods and regions of Ancient Egypt, particularly for non-elite individuals. This alone tells us something important: he was not a king, nor a high official, but an ordinary man whose life unfolded far from the grandeur of pyramids and courtly display.

The burial dates to the Old Kingdom, between approximately 2855 and 2570 B.C., a period when Egypt’s state structures were consolidating and monumental architecture was transforming the landscape. Nuwayrat lay within this developing world; part of the Nile corridor that sustained farming communities, labourers, craftsmen, and administrators who formed the backbone of early Egyptian society.

Although the study does not assign him a personal name, osteological analysis confirms that NUE001 was an adult male. His precise age at death is not securely established in the published data, but he was not a child. He lived long enough to carry within him a genetic history already shaped by millennia of population continuity and interaction. Whatever his occupation, his daily life would have been structured by the rhythms of the Nile: cultivation, seasonal labour, and the demands of a society increasingly organised by the state.

What makes NUE001 remarkable is not that he was exceptional, but that he was representative. His genome does not reflect a transient outsider or recent arrival, but a man fully embedded within Egypt’s population by the Old Kingdom. Through him, we glimpse the biology of the people who built, sustained, and inhabited early Dynastic Egypt, not as abstract categories, but as individuals who lived, worked, and were buried by their communities.

In this sense, NUE001 allows us to do something rare in ancient history: to bridge the gap between the human body and the long sweep of civilisation. His genome does not stand apart from Egypt’s story; it belongs to it.

Bibliography & Further Reading

Lazaridis, I., et al. (2016). Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near East. Nature, 536, 419–424.
(For broader Near Eastern genetic context)

Hassan, F. A. (1988). The Pre-Dynastic of Egypt. Journal of World Prehistory, 2(2), 135–185.
(Archaeological background on early Nile Valley populations)

Trigger, B. G., Kemp, B. J., O’Connor, D., & Lloyd, A. B. (1983). Ancient Egypt: A Social History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(Foundational Egyptological synthesis)

Kemp, B. J. (2006). Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
(Context for population continuity and cultural development)