Representative of a mysterious people: a reconstruction of the face of a woman who died 2000 years ago was created (photo)
Researchers for the first time restored the appearance of a woman who belonged to the people of the Nabateans.
Scientists from Saudi Arabia for the first time were able to create a reconstruction of the face of a woman who died 2000 years ago and lived on the territory of this country, when the Nabataean kingdom was partly located here. Scientists still know very little about the Nabataeans, so this reconstruction is an important milestone in research, writes Live Science.
At Focus. Technologies has its own Telegram channel . Subscribe to not miss the latest and exciting news from the world of science!
Researchers have presented an image of the face of a Nabataean woman, whose remains were found in a tomb among 80 other skeletons. This tomb, which is located in Hegr, a 2000-year-old UNESCO World Heritage Site, is located in the ancient city of Al-Ula, which is now in present-day Saudi Arabia.
This is the first reconstruction in history of the appearance of a woman who belonged to the Nabatean people. The Nabataean kingdom, whose capital was the famous Petra, was located on the territory of the Arabian peninsula and in part of the Middle East. The city of Petra, which is now in Jordan, was the center of international trade, and it connected the trade routes that ran from southern Arabia to the Mediterranean. It is believed that the highest flowering of the Nabataean kingdom falls on the 6th century BC. But, according to scientists, very little is known about the Nabataeans.
The Nabataeans remain a mysterious people for us. The Nabataeans left no historical texts, and we draw information about them from inscriptions on tombs and on rocks throughout the Middle East or from archaeological finds. On the one hand, we seem to know a lot about them, but in fact, this information is not enough. The Nabataeans did not leave any literary texts or records,” says archaeologist Laila Neme, who took part in the new reconstruction.
Archaeologists discovered the remains of a Nabataean woman back in 2015 and named her Hinat based on an inscription that was carved into the tomb. An examination of the woman’s skeleton and other artifacts showed that at the time of her death she was between 40 and 50 years old, her height was approximately 1 m 60 cm, and she belonged to the middle class of her society.
