3500 years later: thanks to digital technologies, scientists have recreated the face of a woman from the time of the Trojan War
Kyiv • UNN
Scientists have recreated the face of a woman who lived in Mycenae 3,500 years ago and may have been associated with the Trojan War. She was buried with weapons, indicating her importance.
With the help of digital reconstruction, scientists have recreated the face of a woman who lived about 3,500 years ago in Mycenae and survived the Trojan War, UNN reports with reference to The Guardian.
Details
According to reports, the woman was about 35 years old when she was buried in the royal cemetery between the 16th and 17th centuries BC. The site was discovered in the 1950s on the mainland of Greece in Mycenae, the legendary residence of the Homeric king Agamemnon.
Dr. Emily Hauser, a historian who commissioned the digital reconstruction, told the Observer: "She is incredibly modern. She impressed me"
For the first time, we are looking at the face of a woman from the kingdom associated with Helen of Troy - Helen's sister, Clytemnestra, who was the queen of Mycenae in the legend - and from where the poet Homer imagined the Greeks setting off during the Trojan War. Such digital reconstructions convince us that these were real people
Hauser also said: "It's incredibly exciting to think that for the first time since her remains were buried more than 3,500 years ago, we can see the real face of a Bronze Age queen - and it's truly a face capable of launching a thousand ships."
This woman died around the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, a few hundred years before the supposed date of the Trojan War
Digital artist Juanjo Ortega G. created a realistic face based on a clay reconstruction of the same woman that was made in the 1980s by the University of Manchester, a pioneer in one of the main methods of facial reconstruction.
Hauser noted that technical advances in forensic anthropology and DNA analysis, as well as radiocarbon dating and three-dimensional digital printing, have led to significant improvements in reconstructions of the ancient world.
We can - for the first time - look into the eyes of the past
Let's add
According to the publication, the woman was buried with an electrum mask on her face and a set of warrior's weapons, including three swords, which were assumed to belong to a man buried next to her, but are now believed to have belonged to her.
"The traditional story is that if there is a woman next to a man, she must be his wife," Hauser said.
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In particular, according to reports, the similarity of faces was noted earlier, but DNA analysis confirmed that they were brother and sister, not husband and wife.
This woman was buried there because of her birth, not her marriage. This tells us a different story about how important she was... Emerging data suggests that far more of what archaeologists call military kits are associated with women than with men in these Late Bronze Age burials, which completely overturns our assumptions about how women are connected to war
She added that archaeological evidence and DNA analysis allow "real women of ancient history to come out of the shadows."
The scientist notes that the condition of the woman's bones suggests that she suffered from arthritis of the vertebrae and arms, which may be "evidence of frequent weaving - a common and physically exhausting occupation among women, which, as we have seen, Helen engaged in in the "Iliad".