For NUE001’s tooth, this procedure yielded the molecular information that four and a half millennia of preservation had maintained.

The specific enamel structure, the enclosed root environment, and the particular preservation conditions of his burial had kept enough readable DNA in the tooth root for the analysis to succeed.

This is the fundamental scientific achievement that underlies the entire story: a tooth, properly sampled with the right techniques, yielded the first complete genome from an ancient Egyptian of the Old Kingdom period.

The technology that made this possible is sophisticated, but the biological principle is simple — the hardest substance in the human body protected the softest biological information.