Geneticists have made an unexpected discovery about the ancestry of the ancient Egyptians. Which modern peoples are the closest relatives of the ancient Egyptians

The first analysis of a complete genome recovered from Egyptian mummies has found that ancient Egyptians were more closely related to other ancient peoples from the Levant region, while modern Egyptians are genetically closer to sub-Saharan Africans.

Study

The findings, recently published in the journal Nature Communications, could pave the way for similar genetic studies of mummies in the near future.

Egypt and other nations

Situated at the junction of two continents and thriving for thousands of years, Egypt is a melting pot of neighboring cultures, ideas, languages ​​and nationalities.

Egypt maintained its cultural, scientific and historical significance as neighboring Arab, European and African empires changed, collapsed and rebuilt.

Scientists wanted to test whether the Roman conquest, the conquest of Alexander the Great or other foreign powers left a genetic imprint on the indigenous population of ancient Egypt.

Questions

To find answers to these questions, scientists extracted the mitochondrial genome from 90 mummies and, for the first time in the history of genetic research, were able to extract the entire genome from three different mummies.

Having collected enough genetic material to conduct the study, the scientists compared the genomes of the ancient Egyptians with the genomes of other peoples neighboring Egypt in ancient times, as well as with the genome of modern Egyptians, to check how different the descendants were from their ancestors.

Answers

The results turned out to be very interesting. The researchers found that for 1,300 years, the period that covered the genetic material of the mummies, the genetic ancestry of the ancient Egyptians did not undergo any significant changes.

It turns out that despite the successive invasions and migrations of large numbers of people into Egypt from all over Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the genetic characteristics of the local population remained surprisingly stable.

Perhaps the genomes of mummies - the highest "caste" of Egypt - are not able to reflect the genetic changes of the entire Egyptian population. However, the results obtained do not lose their significance for science.

Comparison with modern Egyptians

When scientists compared the genetic changes that occurred between ancient times and today, they found significant differences.

It turns out that modern Egyptians share a genetic ancestry with sub-Saharan Africans, while their distant ancestors show closer genetic similarities to the ancient peoples of the Middle East and the Levant.

These results suggest that during the past fifteen hundred years Egypt experienced an influx of people from the southern regions of Africa. The reasons for this influx could be migration along the Nile or the intensive slave trade that began approximately 1,300 years ago.

Significance of the study

One of the most significant results of the study is the simple fact that geneticists have finally been able to extract the complete genome of an ancient Egyptian.

Factors such as the hot Egyptian climate, high levels of humidity in many graves and the chemicals used in mummification actively contribute to the degradation of DNA and make long-term survival in mummies almost impossible.

However, the researchers were able to extract enough material to conduct a full genetic analysis, and this could open the door to interesting new discoveries.

When the last pharaoh of Egypt fell and the country began to be torn apart by continuous attacks from aggressive neighboring countries, where did the local population disappear? Perhaps it completely disappeared during the period from the Roman conquests to the annexation of Egypt to the Muslim empires?

Copts are the indigenous people of Egypt and the direct descendants of the Egyptians. They are among the first Christians in the world and representatives of one of the most ancient branches of Christianity. This is precisely the population of Egypt that, over the course of several thousand years, created a great civilization.

Now the Copts are an excellent example of how Christianity and Islam can coexist in a close environment. The Copts, despite constant attempts at assimilation, are still similar to the ancient Egyptians and are still Christians. They observe not only faith, but also the purity of blood. A Coptic girl will never marry a non-Coptic. And Coptic boys do not marry Arab girls. And only occasionally do they marry European Christian women.

...SHOWED BY YEARS OF DNA RESEARCH

Calling an Egyptian an Arab is tantamount to a grave insult. “We are the descendants of the pharaohs and have nothing to do with the Arabs,” retort the residents of the Land of the Pyramids. However, they turned out to be almost right, and this was confirmed by many years of scientific research, writes the Egypt Independent, citing data from a published study by the National Geographic Genographic Project.

For more than 10 years, National Geographic scientists have worked to determine the genetic profile of every country in the world to determine the racial and ethnic origins of humanity. DNA analysis of hundreds of indigenous Egyptians revealed that the descendants of the pharaohs are only 17% related to the Arabs. 68% of the Egyptians are original Africans, more precisely, North Africans, whose blood was diluted over time by Jews (4%), people from East Africa (3%), Asians (3%) and residents of Southern Europe (3%).

According to experts, “the ancient population migrated from Africa, and their path ran through northeast Africa and then further to southwest Asia.” The northeastern and Arab components in Egypt appeared as a result of those migration flows, scientists are sure, just as later migrants returned back to Africa with the spread of agriculture 10 thousand years ago, and already in the 7th century, with the spread of Islam, the Arabs came here with Arabian Peninsula.

The East African components in Egyptian genetics were a reflection of internal movements towards the fertile Nile, and the appearance of southern European and Asian elements was due to the role that Egypt played in its time in the economic and cultural development of the Mediterranean region.

According to the study, Kuwaitis are the most Arab: their DNA is 84% ​​Arab, 7% Asian, 4% North African and 3% East African. “Middle Eastern blood,” experts note, was also formed as a result of population migration from Africa to Asia, when some people decided to stay and, thus, laid the foundation for the genetic fund of the Arabs. Meanwhile, a small part of African blood, experts believe, could have been the result of the slave trade in the 8th-19th centuries.

As for the Lebanese, only half of them can be considered Arabs (44%), 14% of Jewish blood flows in them, 11% of North African blood, and another 10% was added to them by Asian ancestors along with Europeans (5%) and immigrants from the East. Africa (2%). To the least extent - only 4% - Tunisians can be called Arabs, in whose veins 88% of North African blood flows. It was diluted by 5% by immigrants from Western Europe and by 2% by residents of West and Central Africa.

A little history

It may be considered a mistake that the Egyptians' introduction to the Arabs occurred during the Arab conquest of Egypt in the seventh century. The cultural influence of Egypt on the culture of Arabia is beyond doubt. In turn, from a very early time, the appearance in the Egyptian language of words borrowed from the inhabitants of the eastern deserts has been noted. The main route that connected Egypt with Arabia was through the Wadi al-Hammamat River, which began near Thebes and reached the Red Sea at Al-Quseira. The Egyptians established contacts with the Bedouin tribes on the Sinai Peninsula in pre-dynastic times, when they acquired copper and turquoise from them. The pharaohs of the first dynasty already exploited the mines in Sinai themselves, subjugated the Bedouins living there, or simply negotiated with them.

The Arabian Peninsula was surrounded by steppes and deserts, turning it into a natural fortress inaccessible to conquerors. No wonder the Arabs call it the Arabian Island. Limited living resources forced the population to migrate to neighboring countries. About once every millennium, the migration of Bedouin tribes took on a massive scale. The settlers headed either east to Mesopotamia, or to the regions of Syria and the Sinai Peninsula, beyond which lay the richest Nile Valley.

In 24 BC, by order of the Roman Emperor Augustus, the prefect of Egypt, Aelius Gall, equipped a military expedition to conquer Arabia. It included 10 thousand soldiers of Egypt, both the Egyptians themselves and the Romans and Greeks living in the country. The expedition also included allies: 10 thousand Nabataeans and 500 Jews. This was the first and last attempt by a European state to seize Inner Arabia. The grueling campaign did not bring any results, and after a few months ended with a return to Egypt.

In 269-270, the victorious troops of Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, captured Egypt. According to historians, in order to win the sympathy of the Egyptians, Queen Zenobia spread rumors about her Egyptian origin. In any case, all historians agree that she was fluent in the Egyptian language.

Another brief episode from the history of the relationship between Arabs and Egyptians:

After the troops of Emperor Aurelian managed to defeat the Palmyrans, anti-Roman uprisings occurred almost simultaneously in Palmyra and Alexandria. This speaks to the common interests of Egyptians and Arabs in the fight against foreign invaders.

It was not uncommon for Arabs to live among Egyptians and vice versa. Arab historians report that the Egyptian Bakum, even before the advent of Islam, restored the Kaaba temple in Mecca, destroyed by a strong mudflow, and Jabr ben Abdallah al Qibty (i.e. Copt), one of the closest companions of the Prophet Muhammad, was an Egyptian. The relationship between the Arabs and the Egyptians was influenced by the Prophet Muhammad himself. According to legend, he wished well to the Copts when his Coptic wife Maria gave birth to a son, who was named Ibrahim.

The leader of the Arab army, Amr ibn al-As, who conquered Egypt, was previously a merchant and repeatedly came to this country with his goods. He said: The population of Egypt is nobler than all non-Arabs, more generous and closest to kinship with the Arabs.

From all this it follows that the entry into Egypt under the banner of Islam of the Arab army in 640 was not an invasion of a hostile people. Since ancient times, the Arabs knew the Egyptians, and the Egyptians knew the Arabs. There were armed clashes between them, and long periods of peaceful trade, cultural and religious ties.

The conquest itself took place peacefully. The head of the Coptic Church, which was subjected to severe persecution by the Byzantines, called on all Egyptians not to resist the new conquerors, whose number did not exceed 12 thousand (after several decades there were already more than 80 thousand Arab warriors in Egypt). Each governor appointed by the caliph to Egypt brought with him an army of several thousand people. Many warriors married Coptic women and remained forever in the Nile Valley. The Arabs were especially willing to settle in Upper Egypt, where they were attracted by the hot, dry climate and, of course, the fertility of the land.

After conquering Egypt, the Arabs did not settle in pre-existing cities. Life there was unusual for them. They set up their military camp al-Fustat, near the fortress of Babylon. Gradually the camp turned into a capital. The camp remained the capital until 969. After the Fatimids, Cairo was founded.

The first step in the Egyptianization of the Arabs and the Arabization of the Egyptians is the annual spring dispatch of Arab military detachments to various parts of the country to herd horses. A certain detachment was sent to a certain area, and this led to the establishment of strong ties with the local population. The warriors took root in these areas and gradually mixed with the local population. Interesting fact: an Arab sometimes married an Egyptian woman, but the opposite did not happen.

The mixing of Arabs and Coptic Egyptians was also facilitated by the fact that most government positions (except the highest ones occupied by Arabs) were occupied by Egyptians. The Arab tribes, having settled in Egypt, switched to a sedentary lifestyle and adopted their life experiences, customs and habits from the indigenous inhabitants.

A few centuries later, most Egyptians converted to Islam, forgot their ancient language, and adopted Arabic. Currently, only part of the services in the church are performed in the Coptic language (which has long been incomprehensible to Copts), but Arabic predominates here too. Copts, who make up a population of several million, are not a national minority in the country, as is sometimes said about them. Ethnically, they belong to the Egyptian people, differing from the rest of the Egyptians only in religion.

Copts are Monophysites, that is, they believe that Christ had a single, divine essence, denying the fullness of the human nature of the Savior. The Coptic Church belongs to the Eastern, Orthodox branch of Christianity, and in this sense the Copts are very close to traditional Orthodoxy. But there are many differences between Orthodoxy and Egyptian Christianity - both in theology and in traditions.

The ancient Egyptians are still one big mystery for modern scientists. Most Egyptologists consider them to be natives of Asia, citing the ancient Egyptian language, which belongs to the Semitic-Hamitic group, as evidence of their correctness. A minority of researchers find the ancestors of the Egyptians in “Black” Africa.

It must be said that the artists of Ancient Egypt pretty much confused scientists by depicting the inhabitants of the country with different skin tones - from light brown to almost black. Herodotus, comparing the Egyptians, Ethiopians and Colchians, assumed that they were all related to each other, since their distinctive feature was dark skin and curly hair.

One can only assume that Ancient Egypt, being a melting pot for many cultures and nations for thousands of years, did not form a homogeneous ethnic group, except perhaps the descendants of the pharaohs who maintained the purity of their blood. Over the centuries, Egypt was "inherited" by many peoples, including the Assyrians, Libyans, Cushites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Turks.

Not long ago, German geneticists from the Max Planck Institute decided to check whether representatives of other states and peoples, including the soldiers of Alexander the Great who conquered Egypt, had left their genetic trace in this country. For the study, the mitochondrial genome was taken from 90 mummies embalmed over a period of more than a thousand years.

Scientists have found that the studied genetic material did not undergo significant genetic changes, despite several migration waves from Europe, the Middle East and Africa. But here it is important to take into account that this applies only to representatives of the highest caste, to which the mummified people belonged.

Scientists from Germany also determined that while modern Egyptians are genetically related to sub-Saharan African peoples, samples from ancient Egypt show greater genetic similarity to populations of the Middle East and Levant. The influx of people from the African interior began approximately 1,300 years ago with the rise of the slave trade and waves of migration caused by the Arab conquest of Egypt.

Currently, the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians are considered to be the Copts - the Christian population of Egypt, not exceeding 7% of the total population of the country. Despite the fact that Copts and Arabs belong to different ethnic groups, it is almost impossible to distinguish them by appearance.

Back in 1908, one of the founders of French Egyptology, Gaston Maspero, speaking at the Coptic club “Ramesses”, told its members that Copts are the purest descendants of the ancient Egyptians. According to the scientist, Copts and Egyptian Muslims have the same roots, but due to the large number of marriages with foreigners, the latter have lost their ethnic purity.

The Copts, on the contrary, for many centuries sacredly preserved the purity of their blood, not mixing with the alien Arabs. Copts still marry only once in their lives, not recognizing civil marriages or divorces.

The word "Coptic" is of Greek origin (Αιγύπτιος - aigoptios) and is translated as "Egyptian". It is in the ancient Egyptian language that the language of modern Copts takes its origins; it even managed to preserve the specificity characteristic of the speech of the pharaohs.

At one time, Francois Champollion successfully used the contemporary Coptic language to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. He considered this language to be the last stage in the development of the language of the ancient Egyptians. At the beginning of our era, hieroglyphic writing gradually began to be replaced by the Greek alphabet, and the language itself was modified, eventually turning into the one that Copts speak today.

It should be noted that the population of modern Egypt is not as Arabized as previously thought. According to the latest genetic research data, about 80% of the population of the northern part of Egypt is genetically related in one way or another to the inhabitants of the ancient country of the pharaohs, in the southern regions of Egypt there are about 65%.

Many peoples related to the ancient Egyptians live far from the banks of the Nile, primarily in the Middle East. Scientists name the Lebanese and Syrians as the closest genetic relatives of the ancient Egyptians.

A joint group of German scientists from the University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, while studying the DNA of ancient Egyptian mummies, revealed a close relationship between the Egyptians and another eastern people - the Armenians. The same fact was confirmed by Egyptian scientists in the process of studying autosomal and Y-DNA markers of three pharaohs of the 18th dynasty: Amenhotep III, his son Akhenaten and grandson Tutankhamun.

However, these studies may also indicate that it was not the ancient Egyptians who contributed to the genetic characteristics of the population of the Middle East and Transcaucasia, but, on the contrary, the Egyptian pharaohs were of Eastern origin.

One explanation for the Middle Eastern roots of the Egyptian pharaohs can be the invasion of the Hyksos, who penetrated into Ancient Egypt through the Armenian Highlands and conquered the Don in the 18th–16th centuries. e. part of the state up to the middle reaches of the Nile. They failed to conquer all of Egypt, but they probably greatly modified the genetic map of this country.

Egypt's territory extends across the Arabian and Libyan deserts. The concentration of settlements and tourism is on the Nile floodplain and coastal strip.

Egypt is a colorful country. Antiquity meets modern technology, camels and donkeys make their way through rows of luxury cars. Everywhere you can feel the imprint of the past, and for little money you can relax in comfortable hotels and try rich oriental cuisine.

Sunnis - Muslims - make up 90% of the population.

A Muslim is considered to be one who follows the 5 commandments:

1. Honors the one God Allah with the Prophet Muhammad.

2. He prays five times a day (5 a.m., 12 p.m., 3 p.m., 6 p.m., and 9 p.m.). The direction of the face of the worshipers is always turned towards Mecca. All mosques have a mihrab - a wall with an indentation towards Mecca. Muslims travel with a compass so that they always know the direction for prayer. Only men enter the mosque. There is a separate room for women.

3. It is necessary to give alms - God gave it to you, help someone in need.

4. Ramadan is celebrated every 9 months - you cannot eat, drink or smoke until sunset. Drinking alcohol is generally prohibited by the Koran. In Karim (generous), the poor eat food in the streets.

5. A true Muslim must make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once. Such a trip from Egypt costs 4 thousand dollars. Wealthy Muslims can afford this more often.

Muslim men do not wear gold. By the degree of closedness of a woman’s face, one can determine religiosity. Strong believers leave only their eyes open. Everything is hidden from the eyes of strangers: figure, legs, arms, hair, face. Egyptians wear a galabiya, a long shirt. A headscarf is required for women.

Christians, who make up 10% of the population, dress more democratically. Coptic men have a cross tattooed on their right arm.

Smoking and drinking alcohol are also prohibited for Muslims. In times of crisis, the government first raises prices on cigarettes. Alcohol is sold strictly in selected restaurants.

There is no lunch break at work. Shops on busy streets are open from 12 to 24 hours. Sellers go out onto the road and invite tourists in every possible way. They may offer you a product for $1, ask you to come in for a cup of tea or coffee, or even promise to give you a souvenir. But behind this lies the desire to sell the goods at any price. In the absence of a fixed price in Egypt, it is customary to inflate the price several times. If you immediately reduce the price by 2, 5, or even 10 times, you can not only bring home gifts at a good price, but also enjoy communication and learn interesting things about a topic that worries you. By the way, knowledge of Russian, English, German, Italian is a guarantee of sales. Therefore, the majority of sellers on the streets can boast of their polyglot knowledge.

There are a lot of cars on the roads. Accidents are also common. Sewage trucks ply around the cities, the drivers of which receive 200 pounds ($40). This is a very small monthly salary for Egypt. Drivers are afraid of conflict situations with these giants - with their drivers and the demand for wages.

Traffic lights appeared several years ago. Pedestrians should beware of passing cars - the temperament of the southern country also affects when driving a car. The taxi business is considered profitable. One license costs the owner 10 thousand dollars. The cost of travel should be negotiated first, since the owner, like sellers of goods, is not averse to making good money.

In Egypt, it is not enough just to have a great rest and get acquainted with the way of life of Africans, without visiting the pyramids and without sharing the sacraments of the burial of the pharaohs.

A total of 3,100 burial pyramids were built. Currently, only 70 of them have survived. The most famous, of course, are the Pyramids of Giza. The peace of the pyramids may be disturbed by the growing suburb of the Egyptian capital Giza. From the windows of the five-story buildings one can see the peaks of three of them rushing into oblivion: Cheops, Khafre and Mikerin.

And, once at the foot of the pyramids, you feel like a participant in historical events, changing century after century, ruler after ruler. Only when you are on a stone plateau rising 40 meters above the city level and looking up at a 138-meter-high mass of 2.5 tons of stones do you think about the greatness and role of man in this world. The mystery of knowledge, the power of thought and the greatness of actions are revealed to you. You feel that you are strong and unique, regardless of your age or place of residence.

And I also felt, being at the base of the first Wonder of the World, that all people on Earth are connected to each other by invisible threads and must honor each other forever!