Feb 3, 2020, 1:13 PM
by Göran Dahl
There’ve been studies alleging that Ramses II Y-haplogroup is E1b1a, which is a typical Middle Eastern paternal marker. His autosomal DNA hasn’t been sequenced, meaning that we can’t compare to him to any ethnicity.
As for his hair colour, Wikipedia says it was ginger in his youth according to a French analysis; others say the mummy’s hair was ginger due to the henna Egyptians applied to their hair when it turned gray (used as early as 3400 BC).
Ultimately, we can’t be sure until he has been sequenced. And red hair does occur among Middle-Easterners more frequently than most people think.
Besides, by his time (New Kingdom), ancient Egyptians resembled Lebanese/Palestinian people, which is made evident by how New Kingdom samples plot on PCAs.