More than 4,500 years ago, at the dawn of Egypt’s pyramid age, a man was laid to rest in a ceramic pot. He was then sealed inside a rock-cut tomb. This unusual burial has now yielded a historic breakthrough: the first complete genome ever sequenced from ancient Egypt.
This unprecedented discovery, published in Nature, provides genetic confirmation of cultural links between ancient Egypt and the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East. It also marks the first time researchers have successfully extracted and decoded the entire genetic blueprint of an individual who lived during the Old Kingdom — the time when Egypt’s iconic pyramids first rose from the desert sands.
A long and unlikely journey
The skeleton’s story is as remarkable as the science behind it. In 1902, British archaeologists excavated the sealed tomb in Nuwayrat, a village along the Nile, some 260 kilometers south of Cairo. Inside, they found the skeletal remains of a man, hunched and folded into a large pottery vessel. No other burial of this type has been uncovered in the region.
His bones were donated to the Liverpool Institute of Archaeology, later becoming part of the World Museum’s collection. There, they survived wartime bombings during the Blitz that destroyed nearly all other human remains in the museum’s care.
But the journey still wasn’t done. Researchers wanted to extract DNA from it.
Extracting DNA from ancient Egyptian remains has long been a challenge. The region’s hot, arid climate rapidly degrades biological material. Mummification, introduced later, only made things worse. Attempts dating back to the 1980s (including by Nobel laureate Svante Pääbo) often yielded only contaminated or fragmented DNA.
But this burial was different. Interred before the era of artificial mummification, and sealed in ceramic, the body avoided both environmental extremes and modern contamination.
Using a tooth sample, researchers at the Crick Institute and Liverpool John Moores University successfully sequenced his full genome—the oldest ever from Egypt. Genetic analysis revealed that about 80% of his ancestry came from ancient North Africans. The remaining 20% traced back to populations in the Fertile Crescent, a region that includes modern-day Iraq, Syria, and Iran.
So who was this man?
This was no pharaoh. His name was lost to time. But we can figure out plenty of things about him, including his likely occupation: he was probably a potter.
He was male, middle-aged (perhaps in his 60s) and physically worn down. Signs of arthritis and osteoporosis marked his joints. Most intriguingly, the shape of his bones suggested a life spent sitting on hard ground with arms and legs extended, likely hunched over in repetitive work.
There’s substantial arthritis in just the right foot. That already is unusual. Then, his seat bones are expanded in size. His arms showed a great deal of movement back and forth. These details, combined with images from contemporary tombs, hint that he may have worked as a potter.
Curiously, pottery itself was a recent import to Egypt at the time. It arrived, like much else, from the Fertile Crescent.
Yet even for a skilled artisan, his burial is surprising. He was placed in a high-status tomb, a privilege usually reserved for the elite.“Not any old person ends up in a rock-cut tomb, and you wouldn’t expect any potter to get there. Perhaps he was a famous artisan or maybe ended up in someone famous’ favor.
What Comes Next?
It’s too early to draw sweeping conclusions about population history in ancient Egypt. But this first genome offers a rare glimpse into a long-gone world. It also offers clues regarding a man who, despite his humble trade, went on a truly remarkable journey, both during his life and afterwards.
While this genome provides only a single data point, it opens a path forward. There could be more remains in collections that could offer DNA. Ultimately, researchers want to analyze future DNA samples from ancient Egypt to understand how the area was settled, and when the movement from West Asia started.
Despite all this research, despite two centuries of archaeological work, ancient Egypt is still surprising us in many ways. There’s still much to be discovered. Who knows what we’ll find next?
Journal Reference: Morez Jacobs, A. et al. (2025). Whole-genome ancestry of an Old Kingdom Egyptian. Nature. 10.1038/s41586-025-09195-5
