For the reconstruction, raw data was obtained from the three ancient Egyptian mummies, available in the European Nucleotide Archive.
A team of scientists used a modern technique called DNA phenotyping, to recreate the appearance of three ancient Egyptian men, identified as JK2134 (776-569 BC), JK2888 (97-2 BC), and JK2911 (769-560 BC).
Parabon NanoLabs, which carried out the scientific experiment, revealed the characteristics of these men who were then about 25 years old, using advanced technology and forensic medicine to predict what their faces would look like, among other characteristics.
It is believed that the skin of these young men – who lived in the city of Abusir el-Meleq, south of present-day Cairo – was light brown without freckles, while their hair and eyes were dark.
For the reconstruction, raw data was obtained from the three ancient Egyptian mummies, available in the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), before sequencing and “aligning them with the reference human genome”. An enzymatic repair of the damage was then performed on each sample.
Parabon notes that the work was made possible by biometric advances in the field of low coverage imputation, after which its “Snapshot DNA phenotyping line” was applied to the three ancient mummy samples.
It is explained that the instantaneous DNA phenotype predicted the ancestry, pigmentation and facial morphology of each mummy. Three-dimensional facial morphology revealed the men’s frontal and lateral profiles, as well as a facial heat map. (I)
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