The Egypt That Ancient DNA Reveals

Pulling back from the specific details of NUE001’s genome, what does the study reveal about ancient Egypt as a whole?

The most fundamental answer is: ancient Egypt was connected.

The civilization that produced the pyramids, the sphinx, the elaborate religious texts, the sophisticated administrative systems — the civilization that we tend to think of as monumental and sealed, as a world unto itself — was embedded in a broader web of human movement and exchange that reached from the Nile Valley to Mesopotamia and beyond.

This is not a surprise to specialists.