Y-DNA haplogroup of King Tutankhamun

Also R1b. At least that's what a GENEALOGY-DNA-L poster has inferred based on Y-STR results visible in this video.

25 comments:

  1. Does this mean King Tut was Nordic (at least on his paternal side) and that Ancient Egypt was founded by Nordic stock as many of us have suspected?

    ReplyDelete
  2. It indicates his direct paternal ancestor originated somewhere in Eurasia. I wouldn't get much more specific than that at this point.

    ReplyDelete
  3. But it does suggest that he was Caucasoid, right? And being from Eurasia, he would've been of Europoid stock, not Hamitic or Semitic?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes.

    Incidentally, some people on the GENEALOGY-DNA list are questioning whether the results shown are truly those of Tutankhamun's relatives, but the two markers which have been published match those deciphered from the video clip.

    The problem is that the haplotype is not just R1b, but clearly R1b1b2. Indeed, suspiciously so. Contamination?
    http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2010-02/1266504062

    Closest Ysearch match: QG7FB of West Prussia.
    http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2010-02/1266491126

    I am merely making an observation and not entering into any discussion.

    Sample 115 from Beit Jaan of The Druze: A Population Genetic Refugium of the Near East by Behar, Skorecki, Hammer, et alii, May 2008 at PLOS One differs by one with a 15 at DYS437 from the presumed Tut values. Sam Vass

    http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2010-02/1266519650

    Like I mentioned before, 393 and H4 from the video did match the published
    study. The computer screen displaying the haplotype values seemed to be in
    the same room as the lab technicians while they made their discoveries and
    comparisons. If this was a sample Yfiler screen being displayed then they
    (Discovery Channel or Dr. Hawass) should come out with an explanation to
    dispute my findings. The ball is in their court now and Dr. Hawass should
    put his cards on the table and reveal the specifics. The cat may be out of
    the bag now with these results.

    http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2010-02/1266509237

    Also:

    Additionally, if you look at the CODIS markers for Tutankhamun which they
    provide in the published study and run them in OmniPop, it indicates
    similarity with Europeans.

    http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2010-02/1266510217

    ReplyDelete
  5. If the screenshots of DYS values in the Video are indeed Tut's and not some example profile, African R1b1a-V88 (which is found at 26.9% in Egyptian Berbers from Siwa) seems to be of course the most likely hypothesis. It is known by the way that some other Pharaohs like Shoshenq were of "Libyan" or Berber origin ...

    http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2010/01/r-v88-and-migration-of-chadic-speakers.html

    ReplyDelete
  6. Structure,

    While I have not looked into the issue closely myself, based on the GENEALOGY-DNA discussion the haplotype sounds inconsistent with V88.

    ReplyDelete
  7. For all those questioning whether the screenshots in the video are "stock
    samples" or default results from the AmpF\STR Yfiler kit, another clue has
    been sleuthed out. My friend Gary Felix, from the Mexico DNA Project, asked
    me about the wording at the top far left seen at 01:53 into the video. I
    looked at it again and believe it reads as follows: "AmIII(20)_u_0.5Liz". I
    wasn't sure if this could be referring to the AmpF\STR Yfiler kit or to the
    name Amenhotep III as some abbreviated filename. Gary's question prompted me
    to look again for a filename in the results above that. Lo and behold, at
    01:55 in the video, the entry above had a name of "KV55(25)_5_572608" if I
    read correctly. This apparently refers to Akhenaten (KV55) as revealed in
    the published study. These two particular results are for markers DYS456 and
    DYS389i and the fact that there are "filenames" referencing Amenhotep III
    and Akhenaten speaks greatly for these being genuine results and not some
    "sample" or default screenshot. It turns out that they did not get a strong
    result for DYS456 on Amenhotep III although you can see the slight start of
    a peak at 15 and this would match, along with the DYS389i=13, those for
    Akhenaten. So my hat goes off to Gary for nudging me along into further
    sleuthing. I think in time, hopefully soon, the truth will be revealed.

    http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2010-02/1266545829

    ReplyDelete
  8. If the video shows the actual results of the Pharaohs and their haplogroup is R1b1b2, it is worth to mention that even if R1b1b2 is quite rare in modern Egypt (2% of the population), it is more frequent in NorthWest African where its frequencies are between 7-15% in some regions (Sfax, Tunis, Oran )....
    R1b1b2 is estimated to have arisen approximately 4,000 to 8,000 years ago in southwest Asia and to have spread into Europe and North Africa from there.

    By the way, the closest match I have found for Tut's haplotype is not with europeans from YHRD but in my haplotypes database with a Tunisian from Gabes. It is known also that some other pharaohs like Sheshonk were of northwest african origin...

    ReplyDelete
  9. (following was posted on dna forums)

    Indeed, this was the theory: that the 18th Dynasty represented a revival of native Egyptian culture and started their existence by kicking out the Hyksos. They had their roots in the 17th Dynasty, that was contemporaneous to the Hyksos. Maybe in reality the impact of the Hyksos was a lot more significant, what is also evidenced by the radical cultural changes of Egyptian culture of the New Kingdom compared to the Middle Kingdom. In my opinion, R1b could be an important clue in discovering the real nature of foreign interaction of Egyptian culture in the Hyksos period (that was subordinated to the Hyksos hegemony in the north), as well as an important clue in discovering who those foreign Hyksos really were. The view that Hyksos were just synonymous to Levantine Semites has been traditionally contested. Important IE influences have always been recognized in the Hyksos, even though probably the IE element was already lost at the moment the Hyksos invaders reached Egypt. 17th/18th dynasty R1b, however, may reveal their genetic background (their R1b was most probably foreign), and supply alternative "foreign" explanations for Egyptian cultural developments that Egyptologists were always rather inclined to interpret as home-grown.

    ReplyDelete
  10. niggers gonna hate on this

    ReplyDelete
  11. I watched the video several times. I did print screens. The 389i=9. That is definitely not the value they claim to be showing. I checked the sheet for DYS389i with the picture as well as the value below. It is NOT a R1b value. If you are willing to accept the claims about the video, then you are welcome to that batch of guessing. I will wait until the haplogroup, or at least the haplotpye, is published.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Results for two distinct lineages are apparently shown in the video. Those of Tutankhamun's father and grandfather, and those of a separate, unrelated sample also mentioned in the JAMA paper. See the GENEALOGY-DNA discussion. You are likely referring to the unrelated lineage.

    ReplyDelete
  13. If Tut's Y-DNA Haplogroup was typical North African, Dr Hawass would have been the first one to dramatically announce it on 17 Feb. The fact that nothing has been heard, clearly indicates that the results are being hidden at least for the time being till some smart PR job is done to mollify the expectant Egyptians. After all, Hawass has been vehemently denying that 'our Pharaohs are not Mid-Eastern nor African (probably meaning sub-Saharan) they are Egyptian'. If the haplogroup is R1b1b2, it would be a West Asian lineage. After all this sub-clade originated in Anatolia and dispersed in Neolithic times, largely to West Europe and less into Asia. Given the results from charts pulled off Discovery Channel video, I suspect it is indeed R1b1b2. So what's wrong with it? It is possible.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Quoting Ghassan Mattar from the Lebanese Forces Froum

    I am calling shenanigans

    It looks like Neo-Europid R1b1b2a1-P310 typical to the West Europeans who tampered with the mummy

    If it was Armenian-Anatolian R1b1* or R1b1b2* or R1b1b2a* then its true, since some of those reached Neolithic & Iron Age Africa.

    My Conclusion regarding the results:

    #1 Stock footage for dramatic effect, not the actual DYS values
    #2 True R1b1b2a1-P310 contamination by a Western European Egyptologist, in many ways blood can sink into the body the newer rich layer of Y-DNA will always show up easier
    #3 Egyptian J1e1c-L147 Semitid manipulative minority farudlent effort to deprive the miserable Egyptian E1b1b1-M35 Meditid Egyptian majority of any sense of pride, so they put an R1b1b2a1-P310 NeoEuropid Eurasid dynasty to rub it in their faces

    ReplyDelete
  15. Contamination is unlikely to explain these results, which involve multiple samples from three different individuals.

    In the one of the Discovery Channel's videos they show them extracting from
    deep inside a femur. Not sure there would be much chance for contamination
    there.

    ...from the study....

    These results were repeatedly obtained
    with DNA extracted from 2 to 4
    different biopsies per mummy; moreover,
    they differed from the Y profiles of
    the male laboratory staff and were independently
    reproduced twice in a second
    laboratory physically isolated from
    the first, data-generating laboratory.

    http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2010-02/1266504674

    ReplyDelete
  16. Anything but the JAMA posted values is bogus. They only posted two values:393=18 and H4=11. If you just plug those values into the Whit Athey Haplotype predictor, the most likely candidate is G2c. If by "Nordic" you mean Askenazi, perhaps. I have gone over the video which is the claimed source of that ersatz haplotype frame by frame. Who ever saw those values in that video sees pictures of Adolf in the clouds too.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Why Nordic? R1b has spread all over the globe from northern Spain, so it could be basque, celtic, briton, etc...

    ReplyDelete
  18. John,

    No, the published values are 393=13 and H4=11. Based on only these results, Whit Athey's calculator predicts I2a as the strongest possibility. Keep making mistakes like that and some might suspect you are the type who sees pictures of Moses in the clouds.

    Robert Tarin, the first person to publicly decipher the electropherograms from the video, is I believe Hispanic. The director of FamilyTreeDNA's in-house lab (Thomas Krahn, who is German but who works for a company that is otherwise the very picture of Jewish ethnic nepotism and who is therefore unlikely to be a "Nazi") also scored the electropherograms in the video and came up with results similar to Tarin's. Krahn is obviously not pushing any agenda of the sort you imagine, since initially he speculates the R1b is a control sample and believes the unrelated sample to be the Tut sample. (Note: the file names and comparison with the published results suggest the R1b is not simply a control sample.)

    ReplyDelete
  19. I think speculating on haplgroups without complete data is not science. We don't know what King Tut's haplogroup may be and until that information is published and made available, therefore I think we need to refrain from jumping to conclusion. As for the person who made the racial slur, most African Americans, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Central and South Americans ancestors come from West and West Central Africa and should be indifferent about Egypt. You are a coward.

    ReplyDelete
  20. King Tut Haplogroup Determined to be R1b:
    http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100223183608AA29Z3l

    ReplyDelete
  21. Zahi Hawass would have NO problem announcing that Tutankhamon's haplogroup was R1b.

    However, to this date, no announcement has been made.

    Remember that R1b1a is the haplogroup that his dominant in Cameroon among Afro-Asiatic speakers.

    Could this have anything to do with the fact that the haplogroup has not been announced? Or maybe it is one of the E haplogroups.

    If anyone knows when the official announcment is, please let everyone know here.

    ReplyDelete
  22. R1b is found at low concentrations in North Africa, in fairly high concentrations in the Sahel region, and in high concentrations in Cameroon.

    You cannot relate racial phenotype to Y-DNA haplogroup. Nordic people carry R1a, R1b and distantly related I haplogroups. They are all the same racial phenotype.

    Cameroonians with R1b Y-DNA are not and likely never were Nordics. The point of dispersal of R is thought to be in the area of Afghanistan or Central Asia, not Northern Europe.

    Tutankhamun was the son of Akhenaten, both of whom reigned in the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, following the Second Intermediate Period, when the Hyksos (Egyptian for "foreign kings") invaded and ruled over the native Egyptians. The Hyksos brought chariots and are thought to have originated from Asia. When they invaded Egypt, they did their best to assimilate and adopted Egyptian customs and religion, in spite of the native Egyptian culture's disdain for them. The Hyksos invasion is most probably responsible for the spreading of the R1b haplogroup into Africa.

    Intriguingly for Biblical scholars, the Hyksos were apparently driven out by Yah-moses I, who founded the 18th Dynasty from which Akhenaten and Tutankhamun were descended.

    ReplyDelete
  23. A comment from the GENEALOGY-DNA list, which I can't verify:

    I dont for a sec. think the problem is a lack of reliable Y-DNA results that
    match between the generations.

    Thats been established. The autosomnal results are pretty transparently a
    response to try to deflect criticism for the grand media rollout concerning
    Tuts family DNA and the lavish media campaign to support that, with Zero
    results released.

    Either Hawass personally or his circle in collusion, is simply deliberately
    withholding the Y (and Mt) results.

    I saw a posting in a ARCE researchers blog only a day after the big
    announcement that Tut was supposedly R1b, and that researcher described a
    presentation he claimed to have attended with other foreign Egyptologists at
    that time, during which Hawass told them that the DNA results linked Tut
    Paternally, and his pharoah father, to a specific "Greek" non-egyptian
    ancestor who was a court advisor to the previous pharoah, and that this DNA
    line was not carried in prior pharoahs or later... and was not in fact of
    egyptian origin.

    All this sounds pretty implausible to truthfully 'establish' with such
    certainty, but it does sound like the Hawass bunch was sounding-out possible
    explanations to see how they could ''sell'' the results they are alleged to
    have come up with, without damaging Tuts ''egyptian-ness'' to their liking.

    The next day, the entire ''Tuts' Y-line was father by a greek advisor to his
    grandfather'' description was scrubbed from the ARCE blog and the site
    searched turned up no results to this page at all. It could be that it was
    a inaccurate description of the briefing, or the briefing was 'confidential'
    in nature for some reason, which caused them to remove or instruct the
    archaeologist to remove the summary,
    but it should also be noted that Hawass has the power to totally remove all
    ARCE members or restrict them from working in Egypt.

    so.. my guess is, they have repeatable Y- results that don't fit their
    liking, and could not find a believable way to ''market'' these results that
    did not conflict with what they could accept, and they have the power to
    deter anyone from pursuing the matter too vigourously if they ever want to
    work in egypt again.

    So.. they cut loose with some autosomnal results that offer some results to
    quite those they cant shut up, but don't disclose the Y-results that they
    are eager to keep private.
    Doesnt prove the earlier R1b assertions, but sure doesnt conflict with what
    one would expect if a group of nationalist egyptians got caught with results
    they didnt like and couldnt find a good way to dispose of the matter.

    ReplyDelete
  24. To my caucasian brothers, it appears most of you have missed the point... Clearly there are more similarities than differnces between the races, for you to slander the black race you slander yourselves... remember where you came from..w23

    ReplyDelete
  25. 4 years and 6 months ago, I wrote:

    " If anyone knows when the official announcment is, please let everyone know here. "

    2 years ago, there was the following breakthrough:

    From: Revisiting the harem conspiracy and death of Ramesses III: anthropological, forensic, radiological, and genetic study
    BMJ 2012; 345
    Cite this as: BMJ 2012;345:e8268

    " Genetic kinship analyses revealed identical haplotypes in both mummies (table 1); using the Whit Athey’s haplogroup predictor, we determined the Y chromosomal haplogroup E1b1a. "

    In other words, 20th Dynasty pharaoh Ramses III and his son have the haplogroup E1b1a, nowadays identified with the Bantu Expansion, which happened about the time of his reign (1186 - 1155 BC), estimated at around 1,000 BC.

    Even though we don't have Tut's DNA results yet, it seems clear looking from the Golden Mask, that it is highly likely Tut is also E1b1a.

    This should clear the doubt in any eurocentric's mind that there were Black pharaohs.

    Even more so, for us who are dedicated to the facts and the truth, it is unforgiveable that King Tut's haplogroup is being withheld, and that the haplogroup of Ramses III was buried deep in a report.

    You have to shudder at the arabicentric/turkocentric recreation of Ancient Egyptian artifacts, to make them fit into the post-Ottoman Empire elites' self image.

    ReplyDelete