This makes it one of the best-documented ancient civilizations from the perspective of texts.

But texts are always perspectives.

The Egyptian textual record was produced almost entirely by and for an elite — the literate officials, priests, and royals who controlled the administrative and religious systems of the pharaonic state.

It tells us what those people thought was important to record: royal achievements, divine relationships, agricultural accounts, mortuary prayers.

It tells us relatively little about the lives of the majority of ancient Egyptians, who left no texts because they did not write.

This is why the genome of NUE001 is valuable in ways that go beyond its immediate genetic findings.