President Jefferson and the Egyptian Princess

This is one of those "Everything" entries :) What do Thomas Jefferson and an Egyptian Princess have in common? You'd be surprised, darlings! Since we've added Random Roundup to the front page at Goddesschess, I visit lots of websites in a kind of "circuit" to regularly review and note any articles that catch my eye, my curiosity or my sense of whimsy, besides doing daily sweeps of chess news, archaeology news and egyptology news. In late March I came across two intriguing articles at - get ready for this, now - The Daily Grail website. LOL! Yes, I know, only certifiables read anything at the Daily Grail, right? Wrong! Evidently DG is right up there as one of the most visited sites on the internet. I guess there are a lot of closet certifiables out there, me included... One article that caught my eye was published on March 28, 2007 at the Physorg.com website. It was news awhile back that Thomas Jefferson had been proven via DNA to have fathered one of the sons of Sally Hemings. The original work was done almost 10 years ago, and focused on the Y chromosome, "a male-specific part of our DNA that passes down from father to son." In the years since, technology has advanced; now why the researchers decided to further pursue study of Jefferson's DNA (the article doesn't say), I'll leave that to you readers to decide: "In a study reported in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The presidential chromosome turns out to belong to a rare class called ‘K2’, which is found at its highest frequency in the Middle East and Eastern Africa, including Oman, Somalia and Iraq. Its closest match was in a man from Egypt. Could this mean that the President had recent ancestry in the Middle East? A careful survey revealed a few K2 chromosomes in France, Spain and England. Together, the K2s form a diverse group that may, in fact, have been in western Europe for many thousands of years. "Further evidence for Jefferson’s British origins come from the finding that two out of 85 randomly recruited men named Jefferson share exactly the same Y chromosome as the President. Prof Jobling said: ‘The two men have ancestry in Yorkshire and the West Midlands, and knew of no historical connection to the USA. They were amazed and fascinated by the link, which connects them into Thomas Jefferson’s family tree, probably about 11 generations ago.’ "The ultimate origins of K2 chromosomes remain a mystery, however, and need further investigation: while they may have been present in Europe since the Stone Age, another possibility is that K2s came to Europe with the Phoenicians, an ancient maritime trading culture that spread out across the Mediterranean from their home in what is now Lebanon. The US media has taken up a different theory, leading to the New York Times headline, ‘Jefferson – the first Jewish president?’: European K2 chromosomes may originate in Sephardic (Spanish) Jewish populations, who have their ultimate origins in the Middle East. "Prof Jobling said: ‘When we look closely at large collections of British Y chromosomes we find surprises, like this rare K2 lineage, and the African chromosome that we recently found in a Yorkshireman. These exotic chromosomes remind us of the complexity of British history and prehistory.’" Thomas Jefferson Jewish? I suppose that would be important to some people, but not to me. Nah, it was a few lines down at DG when I saw an article - "The Story of Princess Scota" - I just had to check it out. Over the course of a couple of years, at one time or another Don, Isis and I have all done some internet research on the legend of Scota, an Egyptian princess who ended up in Ireland after marrying a foreign prince (I believe one of the sons of Melitius). Some of the legends say that "Scotland" got its name from "the people of Scota" who eventually settled there after crossing over from Ireland, those people being descendants of the tribe founded by Scota and her husband. My interest in Scota is along etymological lines - what does her name mean, and where did it come from? And so, I clicked on the article, thinking perhaps someone had put together a sort of legendary biography of Scota. It turned out to be a book review of "Kingdom of the Ark," in which author Lorraine Evans "reveals archaeological connections between Egypt and Ireland. Evans argues that the connections between the two distant lands were plausible and there is archaeological evidence to support the theory." The review lists some of this evidence:

• Bronze Age skeletal remains were excavated at the Mount of Hostages at Tara in 1955 by archaeologist Dr. Sean O'Riordan of Trinity College, Dublin, wearing a rare necklace of faience beads, made from a paste of minerals and plant extracts that had been fired. (Remains dated to around 1350 BCE). A study in 1956 that compared that necklace with Egyptian faience beads found they were "not only of identical manufacture but also of matching design."
• The famous Tutankhamun was entombed around the same time as the Tara skeleton and the priceless golden collar around his mummy's neck was inlaid with matching conical, blue-green faience beads. An almost identical necklace was found in a Bronze Age burial mound at north Molton, Devon.
• In 1937 in North Ferriby, Yorkshire, the remains of an ancient boat were discovered. While thought to be a Viking longship at first, continued excavation produced additional ships, wrecked in a storm. Further investigation showed that the boats were much older than Viking ships and were of a type found in the Mediterranean. It was concluded that these boats originated from 2000 years before the Viking age and were radiocarbon dated to around 1400 to 1350 BCE.

I find this absolutely fascinating! Could it really be that some ancient Egyptians visited and possibly even settled on the shores of England and Ireland sometime in the 14th century BCE? Shipwreck seems a plausible explanation. We do know, thanks to archaeological evidence that continues to be uncovered every day (together with fresh looks at older evidence accumulated during prior years), that ancient people and cultures had much more extensive trade contacts than most people give them credit for, going back much further than most people can easily imagine. Man was an explorer and trader from his earliest days, it seems. There is also that intriguing hint of Thomas Jefferson's and others' DNA showing that rare K2 chromosome - passed down from father to son, generation after generation. What if, in an indirect way, this DNA (whose closest match was from a man in Egypt) is evidence that supports the legend of Scota, Princess of Egypt, arriving on the shores of Ireland with a large contingent? Food for thought... We at Goddesschess encourage people to think outside the box. This all could possibly be related to chess - just what does Scota's name mean, and where did it come from???