Preservation of endogenous DNA in cat mummies from ancient Egypt.

Domestic cats are semi-ubiquitous inhabitants of the world, where they live side-by-side with humans, most often as beloved companions. Despite this intimate relationship, many aspects of cats’ domestication still need to be properly understood. This lengthy and complex process sinks its roots in the Neolithic Levant, where the wild ancestor of all domestic cats, Felis silvestris lybica, interacted for the first time with humans, and Egypt, where cats were objects of a popular cult during the 1st millennium BC. Previous ancient DNA (aDNA) studies showed that cats in ancient Egypt possessed two maternal lineages commonly found in modern domestic cats. Haplotype-C, which spread all over the Old World since Classical Antiquity from Northern Africa, and haplotype-A, which was associated with an earlier cat dispersal from the Levant during the Neolithic. From the 1st millennium BC until the 4th century AD, cats in Egypt were mummified as votive offering to the goddess Bastet. Today, aDNA from cat mummies represents a key tool to unravel the role of Egypt as independent centre of domestication. Here, we show preliminary results of cutting-edge aDNA techniques applied on more than 50 Egyptian cat mummies from Beni Hassan, Gourna, and Luxor, dated to the Roman period. Our study provide an extensive case for screening DNA preservation in arid regions, and within different tissues, such as hair, claws, and petrous bones. We also explore the potential to gain novel insights on the dispersal of domestic cats from Egypt in Classical Antiquity through mitochondrial and genome-wide data.