See the 4,800 year old Ancient Egyptian man brought to life

This week we have publication of the first whole ancient Egyptian genome. It's from a man who lived 4,500 to 4,800 years ago, and here he is. Wow, that's amazing. Really lifelike. Yeah, it's a stunning reconstruction, isn't it? How did they do it? Well, they had the skull and they've just got really good at doing this stuff now. Incredible. Really brought him to life. And I've seen they've even speculated on what his occupation was. Yeah, they have. So, look, that's what we're going to get into. To find more about that, we're joined by writer Mike Marshall, who's reported on this for us. Hi, Mike. Hello. Back again. So, Mike, the first thing I want to know is, well, this is the first genome we've had from an ancient Egyptian, but we've, you know, we had John recently talking about Denisovans, we know about Neanderthal genomes. Why is this only the first from ancient Egypt, which is a lot more recent than all of that? Yeah, in fact, it's funny because when we were first talking about this story, we were kind of taken aback. How have we not had any ancient DNA from Egypt before? But yeah, it is almost the first one. So, eight years ago, there were some partial genomes, three partial genomes from people who live significantly more recently than this. But this is the first complete genome of a person from ancient Egypt between 2855 and 2570 BC. So, why is that then? How have they managed to do this now and why not before? So, I mean, we've all been melting in the heat wave and it's basically the same issue. Right. It's too hot. DNA degrades in the heat. And so, you know, the best places to preserve DNA are, like, you know, the high Arctic, where it's absolutely freezing all year round. Whereas Egypt, where you routinely get up to temperatures in the 30s, it's just not the right kind of location for it. And in fact, the researchers said that, you know, this was a real long shot. They didn't think it would work. So, what was the circumstances of this guy then? Where did they find him and how were they able to get DNA from him? So, he was excavated from a site called Nuairat, which is near this great big necropolis called Beni Hassan, sort of quite far south down the Nile, quite a long way south from Cairo. He was excavated about a little over 100 years ago, very early 20th century, and he was buried in a burial pot, essentially a ceramic pot, and that was placed into a tomb that had been cut into the rock. And it's possible that that created a very stable environment. You know, probably the temperature didn't go up and down too much, and that sort of enabled the DNA to survive longer than it otherwise would have. Yeah, the guy I spoke to, the archaeologist, said it was basically like a big Tupperware pot that he was interned in. And like Mike says, it kept it relatively stable, so that's why they've been lucky on this occasion to get DNA out. Brilliant. And so, what have they been able to tell from his genome? So, he was male. As we said, he lived a little over 4,500 years ago. And the key thing that sort of leaps out of the genome is where his ancestry is from. So, about 80% of his genetic material has been inherited from people, you know, North African people, which I think is pretty much what you'd expect. But the other 20% has come from the Fertile Crescent, the Eastern Fertile Crescent, which is that sort of region that's, you know, modern-day Iran, Iraq, you know, the very southeast of Turkey. So, one of the great sort of centres of early agriculture and settled city living. And so, that sort of immediately raises the question of, well, how did that happen? How come this person has essentially one-fifth of their genetic material from over 1,000 kilometres away? And so, it suggests that there's been some sort of contact between those two early societies, despite the great distance. And just to put it into context of where this happens in Egyptian history, I was thinking of a timeline, because it does go on a long time, the ancient Egypt. Yeah, it's like 3,000 years and you forget that it was just a very long-lived civilisation. So, here's how I think of it. If you start with the modern day, the most famous Egyptian is Mo Salah of Liverpool. And then you go back 2,000 years, you've got Cleopatra. Then you go back another 1,300 years and you've got Tutankhamun. And then you have to go back almost another 2,000 years before you get to this guy that we've just sequenced. So, that's the sort of scale of what we're talking about. Amazing. Yeah, and we're quite early in that 3,000-year Egyptian history. We're quite near the beginning of it. This guy came from either the end of what's called the early dynastic period, which is really the first time when Egypt was unified into one state, or possibly the very early Old Kingdom, which is one of the periods when they actually start building some of the spectacular structures that we still see today. So, later on in the Old Kingdom- Some of the first pyramids are from the Old Kingdom and the really famous Great Pyramid of Giza is from the Old Kingdom, or even that is still several hundred years after this guy lived. And look, the DNA analysis is really impressive. They've managed to get it out of this tooth. But it's what they've done with the forensic analysis of the skeleton that's really amazing, isn't it, Mike? I spoke with Joel Irish. He's at Liverpool John Moores University, and he explained what they did from looking at the muscle markings and the wear on the bones, and here he is. From us, sitting in front of a computer, we're not going to have much of any muscle markings because we're just vegetating in front of this. This guy not only had arthritis in the entire skeleton, but incredibly specific arthritis showing very severe features that are reminiscent of what they would do for their lifetime, during their entire lifetime. This guy had an incredibly hard physical life, and that's unusual because being buried in a rock-cut tomb in a pottery coffin would have been more likely a higher status individual. So, it's really unusual to see somebody who obviously worked so hard to be in a high-status tomb. But so, for example, there's like an attachment on the back of the skull that can be a huge large bony ridge, and that connects the neck muscles to the back. And I found it, he has a massive one. Now, males generally have larger ones, but his was like humongous, giant. So, that means he was looking down a lot. And what I found really funny is that I was looking at some clinical studies, and they're finding this more and more in modern teenagers because they don't have their cell phones so much because their guts like this. So, this guy was looking down for like decades of his life. The most interesting thing were his ischia, the bones we're sitting on right now. Ours would be very narrow because we're just sitting on a nice comfortable chair. His, because of inflammation they call osteitis, the left side in particular was incredibly, it's like double width of what it normally should be. So, this means that he spent his lifetime sitting on either a low stool, and I'll say why a low stool, or on a hard surface like the ground for like decades of his life. And then if you look at the femora, the heads of the femora have this area of attachment for a ligament that attaches to the pelvis. And normally, it's a small little hole, but this is like three, four times larger than normal. And also, there are other signs showing that ligaments were quite large and that he would have had been putting his legs straight out in front of him for long periods of time. So, sitting vertically, hunched forward with legs straight out in front. There's also some huge muscle markings on the back, they call the linea aspera, that's where the hamstring muscles attach. And again, you're stretching your legs out, so it causes them to enlarge. So, that's showing sitting legs straight out, but he's also showing an amazing amount of squatting. And so, he was also sitting on the ground a lot and squatting down a lot. And then finally, on the right foot only, the bone for his big toe is just horrifically arthritic, showing polishing. But even more bizarre is that the bones of the arches, this part right here, are normally non-mobile. There's fibrous joints between them, but they're not meant to move. But in this case, they were incredibly worn. There's even polishing. So, that's showing that he was somehow moving his right foot in a very odd way, whereas the left foot was not moving whatsoever. It was normal in appearance. And so, based on this, I went through and looked at all these tomb paintings, and they show, and also these little models that are in tombs, showing different occupations. So, you've got masons, you've got farmers, you've got soldiers, you've got weavers, I mean, all these different possibilities. And the one that really stuck with me that would fit all these motions was that of a potter. And so, there's a really interesting thing on YouTube of this woman who did a thesis showing how it works with a pottery wheel. And the pottery wheel was first introduced about the time this guy was alive. But all of these movements are indicative of someone sitting out, working on a pottery wheel in front of them, but also doing things like stoking the kiln, carrying heavy pottery. I mean, it fit perfectly. The thing, of course, is that this is entirely circumstantial. He could have been doing something completely different. You've convinced me. You're like Sherlock Holmes here with this picture you're painting. It was so much fun. I gotta say, I had a blast with this guy. I just wanted to learn as much about him as I could. So, I mean, it's a cliche to say that archaeology brings the history to life, but it really does. It really does. And I guess, Mike, I wanted to ask you, we've had you on the show before talking about the origins of writing and how ancient Egypt seems to have played a role, but also Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia. Does this take us anywhere closer to understanding that? So, this is where we get into speculation territory, but possibly, yeah. So, the way that we understand it at the moment is that the oldest known form of writing is cuneiform, which is invented in Mesopotamia. And then a few hundred years later, we get the first evidence of writing in Egypt, the origins of the famous hieroglyphics. And we've tended to think of those as being independent inventions of writing. But as we said, this guy's genome shows that actually there was some degree of connection between the two societies. He's literally got a fifth of his DNA from people from the Fertile Crescent. So, is it possible then that actually there was some degree of influence between the two? Maybe one of them invented writing and then the idea was transmitted by people who were traveling between the two. We don't know. That's pretty close to pure speculation, but the timing is so close that you really only have to find one slightly older example of an Egyptian hieroglyph or proto hieroglyph for them to actually be simultaneous. 300 years sounds like a lot, and it is. But at the same time, this far back in time with the archaeological record as incomplete as it is, it's not actually that big a gap at all.