It reflects the kind of connected world that produced all of the great Bronze Age civilizations of the region — civilizations that were not hermetically sealed from each other but engaged in the movement of people, goods, and ideas that characterizes any complex society embedded in a network of trade and exchange.

The important analytical point — emphasized by the researchers themselves — is that NUE001’s genetic profile reflects a mixed ancestry that was itself already ancient Egyptian.

The Fertile Crescent ancestry in his genome was not an outside imposition on Egyptian civilization; it was part of the genetic makeup of an Egyptian person, integrated into the Egyptian population through generations of mixing that preceded his birth.

He was Egyptian.