It seems that women were primarily being tattooed The tattoos from Deir el-Medina are on women associated with temples as priestesses, who had roles in singing and dancing and performance. The most eye-opening find was a single mummy that bore at least 30 tattoos, based on the current analysis. Some of the tattoos, adorning the arms, chest, and neck, were visible with the naked eye—and sound more Brooklyn than Egypt.

2021-09-29: Now combine that with DNA facial reconstruction

Mummy samples were estimated to be between 2023 and 2797 years old. Researchers performed enzymatic damage repair on each mummy before conducting DNA sequencing. Then Parabon used the resulting whole-genome sequencing data and selected 3 samples with the highest quality to analyze. The This is the first comprehensive DNA phenotyping the company has performed on human DNA of this age. They used Snapshot, a phenotyping method to predict the ancestry of mummies, to predict the ancestry, pigmentation, and face morphology of the 3 mummies. The overall genetic makeup of the mummies is closer to the modern Mediterranean or the Middle East people than modern-day Egyptians. Researchers generated 3D meshes for the outline of the faces and calculated heat maps to highlight differences between the 3 faces. They combined these results with the Snapshot predictions and reveal that the mummies once had light brown skin with dark eyes and hair.

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