Representative of a mysterious people: a reconstruction of the face of a woman who died 2000 years ago was created (photo)

For the first time, scientists from Saudi Arabia have managed to create a facial reconstruction of a woman who died 2000 years ago and lived on the territory of this country, where the Nabataean kingdom is partially located here. Live Science writes that scientists still know very little about the Nabataeans, so this reconstruction is an important milestone in the research.

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Researchers presented an image of the face of a Nabataean woman whose remains were found among 80 other skeletons in the tomb. Located in Hegra, a 2,000-year-old UNESCO World Heritage Site, this tomb is located in the ancient city of Al-Ula in present-day Saudi Arabia.

This is the first reconstruction in the history of the appearance of a woman belonging to the Nabatean people. The Nabataean kingdom, whose capital was the famous Petra, was located on the territory of the Arabian peninsula and part of the Middle East. The city of Petra, now in Jordan, was the center of international trade, connecting trade routes from southern Arabia to the Mediterranean. The highest flowering of the Nabataean kingdom is believed to coincide with the 6th century BC. But according to scientists, very little is known about the Nabataeans.

“The Nabataeans remain a mysterious people to us. The Nabataeans have left no historical texts, and we learn about them from inscriptions or archaeological finds on tombs and rocks in the Middle East. On the one hand, we seem to know a lot about them, but actually this information is not enough. The Nabataeans did not leave any literary texts or records,” says Laila Neme, an archaeologist involved in the new reconstruction.

Archaeologists discovered the remains of a Nabataean woman in 2015 and named her Hinat, based on an inscription carved into the tomb. Examination of the woman’s skeleton and other artifacts showed that she was between 40 and 50 years old at the time of her death, was about 1 m 60 cm tall, and belonged to the middle class of her society.

The research team used all their knowledge of forensics and paleopathology (the study of diseases in ancient humans), CT scans and 3D modeling to recreate Hinat’s appearance. Scientists carefully studied its remains and used various anthropological and archaeological data to obtain the most realistic result. But the scientists restored not only his face, but also his upper body, which was 3D-printed and now exhibited at Hegr.

“Studying this woman’s remains, as well as other artifacts, was a great opportunity to learn more about Nabatean ideas about the afterlife,” says Neme.

But due to the fact that scientists did not have sufficient written evidence of what the Nabataeans looked like, they were allowed to freely interpret Hinat’s appearance. Scientists have also used archaeological data to better understand how women in the Nabataean kingdom dressed. Scientists say the inspiration for her current dress came from pieces of fabric found in the tomb.

However, some experts questioned the accuracy of Hinat’s facial reconstruction and appearance. For example, Lawrence Hapiot of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia believes that Hinat’s facial reconstruction is an unscientific interpretation. So Nabataeans can look completely different. But the authors of the project still consider their work as scientific breakthroughs in the framework of the research of ancient mysterious people.

Focus He had already written that scientists had created a facial reconstruction of a 15-year-old teenager who died in one of the caves in Norway more than 8,000 years ago. This boy had an unusually short stature and an unusual head shape.

Moreover Focus He wrote about the reconstruction of the face of a man who lived more than 9,000 years ago in what is now Brazil. Thus, scientists are trying to prove that the remains found 26 years ago still belong to a man, not a woman.