Modern methods of analyzing genetic information have made it possible to understand the relationship of mummies from the Tomb of two brothers - one of the most famous and well-preserved remains of the Middle Kingdom. A dispute that had lasted more than a century had come to an end: the brothers were consolidated. The results are presented in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The tomb of the two brothers was found in 1907 by an expedition led by the British Egyptologist Flinders Pitri near the village of Deir Reef. In it were found mummies of two high-ranking people of Khnum-Nacht and Nacht-Ankh, buried around 1800 BC. Although the burial was untouched, the bodies were already practically decomposed and actually represented skeletons. The inscriptions on the coffins said that the sons of the local ruler lay here, and they had a mother named Khnum-Aa, which made the mummies known as two brothers.

After the contents of the tomb were sent to the UK in 1908, the remains were investigated by specialists. They came to the conclusion that the morphological differences of the bones are too great, which does not confirm the version of close kinship. Then there was a version that one of the brothers adopted. Modern methods have made it possible to extract the remains of DNA from the teeth and partially restore the genetic information. The analysis showed that both men belonged to mitochondrial haplogroup M1a1, which confirms the maternal affinity. The restored sections of the Y chromosome differed, indicating different fathers.

The study was the first successful determination of the kinship of ancient Egyptian mummies at the same time for mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA. The authors note that such reconstructions can not be performed with absolute certainty as a result, however, the results of this study are practically unquestionable.