 The scientists said that obtaining well-preserved, uncontaminated DNA from mummies has been a problem for the field and that these samples provided "the first reliable data set obtained from ancient Egyptians using high-throughput DNA sequencing methods".The study showed that Ancient Egyptians had the greatest affinity for modern Middle Eastern (Arab, Levantine and Anatolian) populations, and had significantly more affinity with southeastern Europeans than with sub-Saharan Africans.Nevertheless, there was a small sub-Saharan African component in the ancestry of the three mummies tested