“In the ancient Egyptians, we don’t find much at all
sub-Saharan African ancestry ….
They look very Near Eastern and have almost zero
sub-Saharan African ancestry”.
According to a recent article:
Egyptian Mummy DNA Reveals Biblical Lineage
“As being a
scientific first in history, DNA taken from Egyptian mummies has been decoded,
producing unexpected results about the true origins of the Egyptian people.
These results confirm a controversial theory that traces the First Egyptian
Dynasty back to Biblical Ham (the son of Noah), as described in the Book of
Genesis.
Scientists
have long been baffled by the origins of the Egyptian people. Until now, there
was no empirical data to clarify the issue. The study of Egypt’s population history
could only draw on literary and indirect archaeological references, and
inferences made from genetic studies of present-day Egyptians. Based on these
sources, most researchers believed that ancient Egyptians came from nearby
northern Africa since Egyptians today exhibit a significant sub-Saharan genetic
influence.
This
scientific belief long contradicted the Biblical account, which designates the
forefather of Egypt as being Mizrayim, a son of Ham.
“Of these were the isles of the nations divided in their lands, every
one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations. And the sons of
Ham: Cush, and Mizraim, and Put, and Canaan. Genesis 10:5-6”
According to
the Bible, Mizrayim settled in Egypt whereas Cush settled in Africa,
establishing two distinct and separate nations that did not share a common
heritage. The scientific theory implies the origins of Africa and Egypt were
the same.
A recent
study of the DNA of mummies, led by Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute
for the Science of Human History, has shed some light on the subject, and his
findings support the Biblical narrative.
Previous
attempts to study the DNA of mummified remains were inconclusive. The hot
climate of Egypt, combined with the embalming process practiced by ancient Egyptians,
destroyed most DNA. For this study, researchers sampled 151 mummies from Abusir
el-Meleq, about 60 miles south of Cairo. Their samples spanned years of ancient
Egyptian history, from about 1388 BCE to 426 CE.
The
researchers were able to collect 90 samples of mitochondrial DNA and three
samples of genomes, the total of an organism’s DNA. The surprising results
showed that ancient Egyptians were more closely related to populations from the
Near East and southwest Asia, and not from northern Africa as previously
thought.
“In the
ancient Egyptians, we don’t find much at all sub-Saharan African ancestry,”
Krause stated. “They look very Near Eastern and have almost zero sub-Saharan
African ancestry.” This, Krause said, illustrates that ancient Egyptians were
more closely related to Europeans than they are to modern-day Egyptians. The
study revealed that the African influence on Egyptians is relatively recent,
entering into the gene pool after Roman times.
These new
findings fit in with the Dynastic Race Theory espoused by archaeologist David
Rohl. Rohl’s theory is that the ancient Egyptians arrived over sea from
Mesopotamia, conquered the Nile Valley, and established the first Egyptian
dynasties. This is in direct contradiction to the previous theory that the
first Egyptian rulers and much of the population arrived by a land route from
Africa.
Rohl based
this theory, which he explained in his book Legend – The Genesis of
Civilisation, on the Biblical account of Ham, the son of Noah. According to
Rohl’s theory, Ham and his people moved from Mesopotamia to settle in Egypt
after the flood. Rohl explains that this is the basis for Horus, one of the
most significant Egyptian deities, who was, in fact, Ham. The name ‘Horus’
means “the distant one”, implying that he came from far away.
To confirm
his theory, Rohl led an expedition in 1988 into Wadi Hammamat, a dry river bed
in Egypt’s Eastern Desert that is the main desert route from the Nile to the
Red Sea. Rohl studied ancient wall carvings and drawings depicting boats that
had been discovered fifty years earlier by archaeologist Hans Winkler. Over 100
of these carvings depicted long boats with as many as 70 oarsmen.
These images
conformed to Rohl’s theory that a sudden period of cultural and technological
development during the First Dynasty in Egypt was the result of an influx of
Mesopotamian elite who arrived in Egypt by sailing around the coastline of the
Arabian Peninsula into the Red Sea and ultimately dragging their boats across
the desert to the Nile”.
