It is the longest-attested language in human history — the same language (with obvious evolution) was written from approximately 3200 BCE to about 400 CE, a span of some 3,600 years.

It belongs to the Afroasiatic language family, which includes Arabic, Hebrew, Berber, Somali, and many other languages spoken across North Africa and the Middle East.

The inclusion of ancient Egyptian in the Afroasiatic language family reflects a linguistic connection to the Near East that is consistent with the genetic connections visible in NUE001’s ancestry.

Afroasiatic is one of the world’s major language families, and the question of where it originated — whether in Africa or in the Near East — has been debated by linguists for decades.

But here is the critical point: the presence of Near Eastern-related ancestry in NUE001’s genome does not determine what language he spoke, and the language he spoke does not determine what his ancestry was.