His jar burial in a rock-cut tomb at Nuwayrat marks him as a person of some but modest means — someone who had access to the resources needed for a decent interment, but not the wealth or status that brought elaborately decorated tombs and professional embalmers.

He was, in the truest sense, one of the many rather than one of the few.

This is precisely why his genome is significant.

The Old Kingdom is well-documented at its elite levels — the tombs of officials, the records of religious endowments, the biographies carved in stone by men who wanted posterity to know who they were.

It is poorly documented at the human level of ordinary people, whose lives left less durable traces and whose stories are filtered through the assumptions and priorities of an elite that controlled the means of record-keeping.

NUE001 is, in the genetic sense, a voice from that other Egypt — the Egypt of the many, not the Egypt of the few.