# Could Egyptian Mummys Be Cloned?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-egyptian-mummys-be-cloned/202059
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 17, 2003, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-egyptian-mummys-be-cloned/202059 "2003-09-17T00:41:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2003, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-egyptian-mummys-be-cloned/202059/1 "2003-09-17T00:41:35Z")
Is the DNA in most egyptian mummys sufficiently well preserved to be able to produce a clone? Seems to me that this might be an interesting project…we would be able to see if old DNA could be repaired enought to produce a clone. And, we might be able to see how genetically close the ancient egyprians were to modern man.
Anybody heard anything latelt about the mastodon cloning project?
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### Author:  [@Scoo8b](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scoo8b)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2003, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-egyptian-mummys-be-cloned/202059/2 "2003-09-17T03:04:01Z")
I read an article a couple of years ago that said that we could clone at least some Egyptian mummies with what we have noe. Of course, they never would… But that’s a different story.
Sorry though, I don’t have any linkage.
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### Author:  [@Z\_Al](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Z_Al)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2003, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-egyptian-mummys-be-cloned/202059/3 "2003-09-17T03:52:47Z")
Ohhh… I want them to clone some ancient Egyptian female 😃
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### Author:  [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2003, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-egyptian-mummys-be-cloned/202059/4 "2003-09-17T03:57:31Z")
I don’t see why they couldn’t clone a mummy, if they could find a woman willing to carry it to term. But the mastodon is another story. Would a female elephant be able to accommodate the developing baby mastodon?
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2003, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-egyptian-mummys-be-cloned/202059/5 "2003-09-17T04:50:49Z")
Are you sure there’s enough intact DNA in a mummy? I remember reading that we can’t clone a mastodon because even the large frozen samples we have now don’t have any complete DNA.
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### Author:  [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2003, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-egyptian-mummys-be-cloned/202059/6 "2003-09-17T05:08:28Z")
I think the cloning process is still sufficiently difficult that successfully cloning living tissue is a crapshoot, let alone dead, dessicated mummy jerky.
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### Author:  [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2003, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-egyptian-mummys-be-cloned/202059/7 "2003-09-17T05:26:54Z")
IANA geneticist bur realistically the answer has to be no. We certainly don’t have enough DNA to clone a mammoth, or even a millionth part of the mammoth genome;
perhaps as a WAG there would be thousandth of the mummy’s DNA available- whatkind of a clone would that be?
And anyway what would be the point?
A cloned egyptian mummy would have no memories of it’s previous life; all you would have is a perfectly ordinary baby, no doubt well within the normal genetic distribution of the modern egyptian population;
Here in England some Mesolithic human DNA was extractedfrom a skeleton found in a cave in Cheddar; it turned out that a local geography teacher shared many of the same genetic markers.
If we had been able to clone that skeleton’s DNA we would no doubt had a perfectly ordinary human child, who would perhaps grown up to be another geography teacher; what is the point of using so much high technology to gain another ordinary citizen?
There are much easier methods.
* * *
SF worldbuilding at
[http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html](http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html)
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### Author:  [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2003, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-egyptian-mummys-be-cloned/202059/8 "2003-09-17T06:59:01Z")
One of my college professors was involved in a project extracting DNA from Egyptian mummies to help establish who was related to who and how, exactly. It’s a delicate process - they had to UV their instruments for several days before using them to prevent contamination, f’rinstance - but you can get useable DNA from mummys.
Now, there’s a big difference between getting PCR-quality DNA and getting intact genomic DNA. I can’t say for sure how good the DNA they got was.
But, of course, no one’s even going to try looking into it until and unless plain ol’ regular human cloing has been perfected, and that doesn’t look too likely in the near future.