Behind the statistics and the haplogroup designations and the ancestry models was a real person.

He was an adult male, probably of mature age based on the skeletal evidence.

He lived in Middle Egypt, in the third millennium BCE, in a community that was part of the Old Kingdom’s administrative and agricultural reach.

He was not powerful — his burial, modest by Old Kingdom standards, marks him as an ordinary member of Egyptian society.

He worked, presumably, in the fields or in some craft or trade that supported his community.

He lived, and grew old, and died, and was placed in a ceramic vessel in a tomb cut into a hillside.