Trivia on the Natufians

In 1928, Charles Lambert had uncovered, during a preliminary investigation at el- Wad, the first prehistoric art object discovered in the Near East, a finely carved bone animal head. He had also discovered human, later identified as Natufian, burials. - Courtesy of the University of Cambridge, the department of archeology.

The "Natufians", the reputed "first farmers" of the Neolithic "Near East", had gone from being regarded as mere "cannibals" by observers of the day shortly after being uncovered in the late 1920s to becoming widely recognized as "pioneers" of the farming economy that took hold in the Neolithic era and was subsequently swept into Europe.

Akhenaten's Face!

When we hear the name "Akhenaten", more than likely for many of us, the first image of the pharaoh that comes to mind is one similar to those displayed on the statues below:

The consistency with which each of the sculptures above portray the Pharaoh's face, like for example, the way the statues display a personality with a rather long slender face, obviously plays a role in image stamped into folks' minds about the pharaoh. The images are consistent in the way the Pharaoh's cheek bones manifest, the aforementioned long and slender face, the eye-shapes, the nose and lips. Such artistic consistency has even enticed anthropologists to link the Pharaoh to skeletal remains that they feel conforms to the long facial profile seen the New Kingdom statues. Such consistency may even suggest that the images are capturing the pharaoh when he was alive, and in light of such matters, it may be seen as a dismissive one but the question is: Is this what the living Pharaoh would have really looked like?