A tomb of puzzles
In 1915, an expedition from Harvard University and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts blasted through boulders to enter a tomb in the necropolis of Deir el-Bersha. Inside Tomb 10A, they found a scene of ancient chaos. Looters had plundered the burial chamber of a provincial governor named Djehutynakht and his wife thousands of years earlier, stealing jewels and setting a fire to cover their tracks. The thieves had dismembered the bodies, leaving a headless torso in a corner and a finely wrapped and painted head resting bizarrely on a large cedar coffin.
The tomb belonged to the governor of the 15th Upper Egyptian Nome, who lived around 2000 BCE, during the late 11th or early 12th Dynasty. The identity of the severed head, however, was a mystery. Both the governor and his wife had the name Djehutynakht, making visual identification impossible. A CT scan in 2005 revealed that important facial bones which might have helped determine the sex were removed during mummification. For decades, the question remained: was the head that of the governor or his wife? The artifacts, including the head and the magnificent "Bersha Coffin," were awarded to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where the mystery would eventually be solved.
The FBI and a 4,000-year-old tooth
Solving the mystery required technology unavailable to the original excavators. The Museum of Fine Arts partnered with an unusual collaborator: the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI's forensics team wanted to test advanced DNA sequencing techniques on challenging ancient samples. The hot, dry climate of Egypt is notoriously harsh on DNA, and previous attempts to sequence 4,000-year-old Egyptian mummies had failed or produced contaminated results.
Forensic scientist Odile Loreille drilled into a molar extracted from the head to collect bone powder. Teeth can protect genetic material from degradation better than other tissues. From this powder, she successfully extracted and sequenced segments of ancient DNA. The analysis checked the ratio of sex chromosomes, which conclusively showed the head belonged to a male; it was Governor Djehutynakht.
The investigation also sequenced his mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed down through the maternal line. The results showed he belonged to haplogroup U5b2b5. This genetic group is Eurasian and is common today in parts of Europe and the Near East, but it is rare in modern Egyptians. This finding shows genetic links between the Egyptian ruling class of the Middle Kingdom and populations from the ancient Near East.