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LinkedInHow do you go about bringing a 1,200-year-old Peruvian queen back to life? As reported in National Geographic, that was the task undertaken by archaeologists Milosz Giersz and Roberto Pimentel after they discovered the so-called Huarmey Queen in El Castillo de Huarmey, Peru, in 2012.
Thought to have been at least 60 when she died, the noblewoman was found buried in her own special tomb near 57 other presumed aristocrats from the Wari people, who dominated before the arrival of the Incas.
The experts determined the woman had been famed for her weaving, as she was buried with golden weaving tools and other spectacular ornaments.
Not content with their find, Giersz and Pimentel called in Oscar Nilsson, a facial reconstruction expert who, after building a 3D model of the queen’s skull to get started, then painstakingly remade the rest of her face by hand.
Using images of local Indigenous women as a reference point — something Nilsson allowed after it was discovered the queen had consumed the local water and was therefore likely from the area — he then gauged the thickness of the her flesh by using datasets.
In all the job took him 220 hours, with Nilsson capping it off by using real hair from local Andean women to cover the queen’s head.
“If you consider the first step to be more scientific, I gradually come into a more artistic process, where I need to add something of a human expression or spark of life,” Nilsson told National Geographic. “Otherwise, it’d look very much like a mannequin.”
“I’ve worked with this for 20 years, and there are many fascinating projects—but this one was really something else. I just couldn’t say no to this project,” he said.
Among the artifacts discovered with the queen in the so-called Temple of the Dead were spectacular golden earrings marked with supernatural imagery.
However, with the Wari valuing some textiles ahead of even gold and silver, it is thought it was the queen’s master weaving skills that would have seen her venerated in such a fashion.
