Woman realizes it was ‘money down’ after getting DNA test results

A woman who was born and raised in Egypt shared her less surprising results after taking a DNA ancestry test at home.

Maryam Farid Mohamed, who now lives in the UK, paid £80 for a DNA test which revealed her ancestry – she is 100% Egyptian. She shared the result in a TikTok post, writing in the caption “Money went down the drain” because of the simple result. The video has since gone viral with over 1.8 million views.

Muhammad said Newsweek that although both parents are 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 they both come from different villages in the Nile Delta, my father’s family comes from Upper Egypt,” she said. “My father said, ‘You could have paid me this money to tell you what you are.’ Make no mistake.”

Expecting a more diverse result, Mohamed even uploaded his raw DNA data to other platforms such as MyTrueAncestry and IllustrativeDNA, hoping to uncover ancestry from neighboring regions. Further testing confirmed its dominant ancient Egyptian heritage—with some traces of ancestry 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; we just shared it for fun, but here we are,” Mohamed said of the unexpected online attention.

In the comments, people reacted to the unusual result. Sunny_Sol-Soliel posted: “It’s actually amazing considering how many other peoples went through Egypt!”

Viewer Angel commented: “It’s actually impressive. I feel like you’re practically royalty.”

“That’s bro. Imagine how much history you have to learn and report back, that’s actually wild,” added another commenter, impressed by the 100% test result.

The popularity of DNA testing has increased 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 experience life-changing revelations. A man discovered his father was not related to him after a DNA test, and a woman found out why she was different from her sisters after a home test.

“You may discover unexpected facts about yourself or your family when you use our services,” reads DNA testing company Ancestry’s privacy statement. “Once discoveries are made, we cannot undo them.”