A woman who was born and raised in Egypt has shared her less-than-surprising results after doing an at-home ancestry DNA test.
Maryam Farid Mohamed, who now lives in the U.K., paid £80 for a DNA test that revealed her ancestry—she is 100 percent Egyptian. She shared the outcome in a TikTok post, writing in the caption, “Money went down the drain,” because of the straightforward result. The video has since gone viral, with more than 1.8 million views.
Mohamed told Newsweek that, although both her parents hail from different villages in the Nile Delta, she was shocked by the results. “I was surprised; my parents’ families come from very different villages. Although both come from different villages in the Nile Delta, my dad’s family originates from Upper Egypt,” she said. “My dad was like, ‘You could’ve paid me this money to tell you what you are.’ He’s not wrong.”
A picture from the viral TikTok where Maryam Farid Mohamed shared the results of her DNA test. She told Newsweek that her parents come from very different villages.
@sandm0nkeyy/TikTok
Expecting a more diverse result, Mohamed even uploaded her DNA raw data to other platforms like MyTrueAncestry and IllustrativeDNA, hoping to uncover ancestry from neighboring regions. The additional tests confirmed her dominant ancient Egyptian heritage—with some traces of ancestries from nearby areas such as Sudan in Northeast Africa and the Levant in the Eastern Mediterranean region of West Asia.
“I didn’t expect the video to go viral; I just shared it for fun, but here we are,” Mohamed said about the unexpected online attention.
In the comments, people reacted to the unusual result. Sunny_Sol-Soliel posted: “That’s actually amazing considering how many other peoples have crossed Egypt!”
Viewer Angel commented: “That’s actually really impressive. I feel like you’re basically royalty.”
“That’s rad bro. Imagine how much history you have that you can learn about and relate to that’s actually wild,” another commenter added, impressed by the 100 percent outcome of the test.
The popularity of DNA testing has boomed in recent years. MIT Technology Review magazine said that, by early 2019, more than 26 million consumers had added their DNA to commercial ancestry and health databases.
While some, like Mohamed, receive results that confirm their expectations, others face life-altering revelations. One man discovered that his dad wasn’t related to him after a DNA test, and a woman found out why she was different to her sisters after an at-home test.
“You may discover unexpected facts about yourself or your family when using our services,” DNA testing company Ancestry’s privacy statement reads. “Once discoveries are made, we can’t undo them.”
