Reconstruction of the ancient

This study will help scientists better understand the ancient Roman mask making process.

About 2,000 years ago, the Romans used to make wax masks for dead people, this mask was used during funerals and then used as a standard image to sculpt the statue of the dead, handed down to posterity. .

Wax pattern cast from researchers' faces who want to recreate the ancient Roman mask

Recently, researchers at Cornell University studied these wax statues further and tried to recreate their faces with wax. They noticed, the wax mask is really lifelike.

According to researcher Katherine Jarriel, wax is a fairly sensitive and unstable material. Although replacing raw materials with beeswax with many advantages such as melting at low temperatures, easy to cut, shape at room temperature, easy to mix with colorings, or not difficult to create mold contours face . then after a while, the surface of the mask also appears pits, small holes.

In Roman times, masks will constantly be discolored, decomposed by many external effects such as candles and smoke during the copying process.

Annetta Alexandridis, professor of art history at Cornell University, said that with these external effects, it is possible that the reconstructed face has a picture of a zombie. The question is why do they not choose a safer material, like plaster?

Researcher Katherine Jarriel speculated that people in ancient Rome appreciated the value of wax, especially beeswax. A mask made from beeswax shows that the person has power and social distinction with others.

Along with that, beeswax is easy to form and results in a more realistic, realistic mask. Therefore, the experts cast their faces with beeswax, which will study the next steps to reconstruct the face of the ancient Romans.