Mycenean royal face reconstructed

[Imperial Dave]

https://greekreporter.com/2025/04/06/digital-reconstruction-face-mycenean-era-royal-woman/

The graphics are getting better...

[Jim Webster]

 Am I allowed to comment that there is no way she is mid thirties.
Barely late teens!

[Erpingham]

Presumably the auburn hair and hazel eyes is from the genetic studies, in contrast to the more common dark haired images. She does look like a more modern 30s, with access to a good skin care regime and good pain relief for the arthritis.

[RichT]

Presumably the auburn hair and hazel eyes is from the genetic studies, in contrast to the more common dark haired images.

Well you'd hope, though I don't have a vast amount of faith in that (and the eyes look blue to me).

This seems to be a publicity image to promote Emily Hauser's new book, and, fair play, she has achieved a very high degree of press attention eg

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/apr/05/peering-into-the-eyes-of-the-past-reconstruction-reveals-face-of-woman-who-lived-before-trojan-war

I wonder if the image would have got quite so much attention if it had actually looked like a mid-thirties Bronze Age Mycenean woman with arthritis?

I can't find any info on the artist; the original skull is presumably one from this article:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/annual-of-the-british-school-at-athens/article/abs/seven-faces-from-grave-circle-b-at-mycenae/BA0AA9D2DD4C70C777E9361DECDF8929

[RichT]

FWIW here are the original Manchester reconstruction and the skull they were working from. As they say, the reconstruction was somewhat speculative...

The new version does have something of a likeness to the clay version, but has ignored their hairstyle guesses (which were based on frescoes).

Do these sorts of reconstructions have any value whatever? Discuss.

[Erpingham]

the eyes look blue to me

I was in two minds, but I think you're probably right.

Thanks to your pointer to the British School article, I spotted that Richard Neave, who did the original clay reconstruction, had published it in his book Making Faces, which I happen to have (pp136-139).  Things to note is that the centre of the face is missing from the skull - no nose, upper jaw or eye sockets.  So, any reconstruction is a bit speculative. The other thing is , in Neave's reconstruction, she looks like a woman in early Middle Age troubled by arthritis. She also has a less modern hairstyle, with Neave spending a page on how they researched it and came to a conclusion.

You may ask, do the reconstructions look like the same woman. The answer is yes, though Neave's looks about 10 - 15 years older.

Add : Crossed in the post with Richard there, so apologies for the repetition.

[Imperial Dave]

Do these sorts of reconstructions have any value whatever? Discuss.

in reality...not much I guess but its clever tech....

[Erpingham]

Do these sorts of reconstructions have any value whatever? Discuss.

They help non-specialists to visualise the past, like all reconstructions. Like all reconstructions, they can mislead if not accompanied with explanatory information.  In this case, I'd be particularly cautious, as the image seems to have been released to promote a book, rather than provoke what might be an interesting discussion of late 20th century analogue techniques versus 21st century digital ones.

[RichT]

My own 2p - I can see the value in visualising the past (in fact I'm all for it for obvious reasons) but in this particular case, there is no 'past' in this image. It's a de-aged, idealised, ridiculously perfect image of a ridiculously flawless human female - I don't suppose any real person has ever looked like that, past or present, outside the heavily retouched pages of a magazine or cinema. The original reconstruction was itself highly speculative given that the skull on which it was supposedly based had no face, so this is a speculative reconstruction of a speculative reconstruction. If details like skin tone, hair and eye colour are based on DNA evidence we are not told, so we have to assume they are just invented to be attractive to a modern male viewer, like the rest of the image. Such elements of the past - like the hair style - that were present in the Manchester version have been removed. What is left is just a standard AI-generated image of an idealised female with no relevance to history whatever.

The technology (which, yes, is very clever) can be used to produce interesting and valuable images - I quite like for example the reconstructions of Roman Emperors that can be found eg on YouTube. I would like to see more things like that.

This has ended up being a bit of rant - I just find things like this, the silly hype, and the massive exposure it gets, irritate me. "For the first time, we are looking into the face of a woman from a kingdom associated with Helen of Troy". Pish and, indeed, pshaw.

[Imperial Dave]

Rant away....

[RichT]

Incidentally just for fun I asked ChatGPT for an image of a Mycenean royal woman in her mid thirties and it came up with the attached. Which I think is a lot better (but probably wouldn't sell as many books).

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you look at it) image AIs are generally hopeless at generating historically accurate clothing and equipment so won't be replacing human artists for reconstructions any time soon (at least not for a few months...)

[Erpingham]

I think the most disappointing thing for me is the book author/image commissioner can express her surprise how "modern" the reconstructed face looks.  This shows such a lack of understanding both of the reconstructive process and what makes a person look "in period", it's concerning an academic could be so deceived.

The subject is, in biological terms, a modern European. Dress her in the right clothes, do her hair in a modern style, give her modern cosmetics and she will look contemporary. Dress her in Mycenean clothes, do her hair Mycenean style and give her a period cosmetics and she will look "historical".

[DBS]

This has ended up being a bit of rant - I just find things like this, the silly hype, and the massive exposure it gets, irritate me. "For the first time, we are looking into the face of a woman from a kingdom associated with Helen of Troy". Pish and, indeed, pshaw.

Exactly.  For the first time... except of course for the odd Mycenaean or Minoan fresco depicting women...

I also noted with despair the comments about women and military equipment.  I realise I am probably forty years out of date on the archaeology, but am unaware of any significant finds linking Aegean women with military gear, as opposed to modern archaeologists being afraid of committing cultural crimes by assuming that weapons=blokes, ignoring the whole point of the Amazon myths as being something distinctly "Other".

[Nick Harbud]

According to Adrian Nayler's Slingshot article, human artists need no help from an AI in producing wildly fantastical recreations of the ancients.  Indeed, it is hard to see how any day soon computers will replace humans in this field of endeavour.

I mean, when researching my article on Castillon 1453, some of the reconstructive illustrations could not possibly have been dreamt up by any AI.

[stevenneate]

I would have been more impressed if she was pictured with hair like Medusa!

However I have to agree with those above that the image is a flawless modern AI interpretation that is not reality and gives no look back at the past.