Egypt underwent many political transformations during its three-thousand-year Dynastic history, including periods of foreign rule (the Hyksos, the Libyan pharaohs, the Nubian pharaohs, the Persians).

How these events affected the genetic character of the Egyptian population is a major open question.

The genetic relationship between ancient and modern Egyptians is also only beginning to be addressed.

The modern Egyptian population’s genetic profile reflects millennia of additional admixture — Greek, Roman, Arab, Turkish, and other contributions — layered on the older substrate.

Disentangling these contributions and tracing the continuity of the older North African and Near Eastern ancestry from ancient to modern times will require extensive ancient DNA sampling across Egyptian history.

These unknowns are not criticisms of the NUE001 study — they are the natural boundaries of what a single genome can address.