Today, 17 February 2010, Zahi Hawass and his team published their findings on the DNA testing of the mummies of Pharaohs from the 18th Egyptian Dynasty as published to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA. 2010;303(7):638-647; see below for link). Hawass and his team used autosomal STRs to prove paternal lineage connections between the mummies of the Egyptian Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty. This type of paternity testing is based on the FBI's CODIS system and is used for genetic profiling, otherwise known as "genetic fingerprinting." Arlington, Virginia based private company DNA Tribes.com use this technology to determine ethno-regional genetic ancestry, like Levantine or African or Eastern European, etc.What Hawass and his team used is autosomal DNA, which is recombining in that you inherit mutations from both your mother and father. While autosomal DNA can be used to determine sibling and parent-child relationships, it is best used to determine ones ethno-regional genetic heritage when placed into a global population database for genealogical uses.
King Tut or Tutankhamun, and his ancestors are important for a reason aside from the archaeological discoveries in his tomb. The Hebrew exodus out of Egypt is traditionally believed to have taken place under one of the Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty, one of Pharoah Tutankhamun's ancestors.
All that Hawass has proven with a degree of probability is that King Tut is related to mummy KV55, which is not even known for certain to be Akhenaten. It is believed that mummy KV55 is either Akhenaten or Smenkhkare. No actual YDNA paternal lineage was established nor disproven between King Tut, mummy KV55, and the mummy of Amenhotep III, nor the mummy of Thutmose II included as part of a "control group" in this study of ancient Egyptian autosomal DNA. In total, the ancient DNA of 16 royal and nobleclass Egyptian mummies were included in the study.
In contrast, the Cohen genetic study actually proved through YDNA that a high percentage of Cohenim shared an actual paternal lineage as evidenced in both their haplogroup (J1e) and haplotype mutations, although no ancient DNA was included in the Cohen study as it was based on Cohenim alive today. Cohenim are the Jewish priestly class believed to be descended from Aaron the first Jewish Priest from the Tribe of Levi (Hebrew: Cohen), and in theory would share the YDNA of the brother of Aaron, Moses who was raised in Pharaoh's household as one of his sons, possibly during this same 18th Egyptian Dynasty. The biblical narrative indicates that Moses later rejoined the Hebrews when he became aware of his true ethnic heritage and led the Hebrew people out of Egypt as known in the biblical Book of Exodus.
While the chances of random convergence are small with autosomal STRs, it really can only establish a link between parent to child when applied to genealogy in matching mutations, but is not considered reliable for paternal lineage tracking such as with YDNA SNP haplogroups and STR haplotyping.
The question deserves asking: If Hawass and his team were able to isolate autosomal STRs could they not also have isolated YDNA haplogroups and haplotypes? The fact that they didn't publish the haplogroup(s) and haplotypes of the Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty is disappointing. Zahi Hawass has gone on record to state, "Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa." In order to establish the Pharaohs were not Arabs nor Africans, Hawass would have to show evidence that the mummies of the Pharaohs were not found in YDNA haplogroups E or J, both associated with modern African, Arab, and Jewish populations, and also the two most common YDNA haplogroups among Egyptians today (Luis 2004).
We applaud Dr. Zahi Hawass and the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities for their pioneering work and encourage them to revisit the study and publish the YDNA haplogroups and haplotypes of the 16 Egyptian mummies they tested, and continue to lead Egyptian and biblical period archaeologists into the undiscovered world of ancient DNA.
Sources:
Link to JAMA article on King Tut:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/303/7/638
Luis, et al, "The Levant versus the Horn of Africa: Evidence for Bidirectional Corridors of Human Migrations," Am J Hum Genet. 2004 March; 74(3): 532–544. Available online: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182266/ [Accessed 17 Feb 2010]
