The one thing that always gets to me is the fact that so many of them have been preserved. Have a look at Seti I here for instance. The man died over 3000 years ago, and you can still see even today that he must have been a handsome devil back in the day!
A mighty thick neck, strong jawline, aquiline nose… Seti was an absolute Chad to use today’s internet vernacular. It really brings the old warrior to life. Likewise, we know for a fact that King Tut was a bit of an inbred yokel compared to some of his powerful ancestors.
We know that Seti’s son, Ramesses II, was a great pharaoh and that he lived to be around ninety years old. We also know that, based on the computer-generated version of his face above, he apparantly looked like… a non-playable character from an early 2000s roleplaying game?
Even their heights, we can determine beyond reasonable doubt. Much like a phallus in winter, a mummified body may experience some shrinkage of course. Still, even at ninety Ramesses stood 5′7″, and having perhaps lost a few inches due to old age, a crooked spine and copious old battle wounds, it’s not hard to imagine a young Ramesses standing at some 5′9″ or 5′10″ which would have made him quite a big lad in his day and age. You know how this absolute unit of a man hunted? Not with dogs, too mundane — Ramesses had lions running in front of his golden chariot!
Nobody knows for certain what Alexander the Great looked like. Xerxes. Or Darius the Great. We haven’t found the mummified remains of the most powerful of Chinese emperors, and the Romans used to burn their dead so no one will ever gaze upon the face of Caesar or Pompey Magnus. And yet, anyone with access to Google can see Ramesses’ haughty, ancient face. Or see for himself what a great bull of a man Seti was. We can see them, when for every single one of their contemporaries we have only the words of others and idealized images painted long after their demise.
And I just love that… these are Biblical characters, after all. Men who may well have walked alongside Moses and we can see them. Hell if we’re employed by a museum we may even get to touch them. It amazes me to no end.
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