What Nefertiti, Julius Caesar, Anne Boleyn and other historical figures would look like today

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Every time you come across some historical person, looking at her sculpture or portrait, you involuntarily ask yourself a question, how would she look in the real world? Was she really as beautiful as the sculptor or portrait painter portrayed her? Graphic designer Becca Saladin also thought about this, and she became curious to know what kings, generals and other historical figures would be like in our time. Your attention - stylized, modern portraits of the greats of this world, which amaze the imagination.

1. Nefertiti

Nefertiti's origins are not documented, but since her name translates to "a beautiful woman came," early Egyptologists believed that she must have been a princess from Mitanni (Syria). However, there is strong circumstantial evidence that she was the Egyptian-born daughter of the courtier Aya, brother of Akhenaten's mother, Tii.

By the end of the fifth royal year of Akhenaten, Aton became the main national God of Egypt. The old state temples were closed, and the courtyard was moved to the purpose-built capital city of Akhetaton (Amarna). Here Nefertiti continued to play an important religious role, worshiping with her husband and serving the feminine element in the Divine triad formed by God Aten, King Akhenaten and his queen. Her sexuality, accentuated by an exaggerated feminine body shape and thin linen robes, and her fertility, accentuated by the constant appearance of six princesses, indicate that she was considered a living goddess of fertility. Nefertiti and the royal family appeared on private prayer steles and on the walls of non-Christian tombs, and images of Nefertiti stood in the four corners of her husband's sarcophagus.

Shortly after the 12th Royal Year of Akhenaten, one of the princesses died, three disappeared (and also presumably died), in other words, the queen of Egypt also suddenly disappeared after a series of events. The simplest conclusion is that Nefertiti also died, but there is no record of her death and no evidence that she was ever buried in the royal tomb of Amarna. It was believed that she could leave Akhenaten and go to Thebes or to the Northern Palace, taking the name Smenhare, but this version was soon refuted.

Nefertiti's body was never found. If she had died in Amarna, it seems incredible that she would not have been buried in the royal burial vault. But a burial in the Valley of the Kings confirms that at least one of the Amarnian burials was reburied in Thebes during the reign of Tutankhamun. Therefore, Egyptologists suggested that Nefertiti may be one of the unidentified bodies found in the caches of royal mummies in the Valley of the Kings.

Amarna was abandoned shortly after Akhenaten's death, and Nefertiti was forgotten until, in 1912, a German archaeological mission led by Ludwig Borchardt discovered a portrait bust of an Egyptian queen lying in the ruins of the Amarna workshop of the sculptor Thutmose. The bust was exhibited in the Berlin Museum in the 1920s and immediately attracted the attention of the whole world, as a result of which Nefertiti became one of the most recognizable and, despite the absence of a left eye, the most beautiful female figures of the ancient world.

2. Guy Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar, a great commander and politician, decisively and irreversibly changed the course of the history of the Greco-Roman world. Even people who do not know anything about Caesar as a historical person are familiar with his surname as a title denoting a ruler who throughout his life opposed the Senate, constantly entering into disputes and conflicts with him, which entailed harmful and irreversible consequences.

One area in which Caesar's genius went far beyond the demands of his political ambitions was in his writing. Of these, his speeches, letters and brochures are lost. Only some of the stories (both incomplete and supplemented by other manuscripts) about the Gallic and Civil War have survived. Caesar was considered a brilliant orator in an era when he rivaled first Hortense and then Cicero.

The most amazing characteristic of Caesar is his energy, intellectual and physical. He prepared his seven books on the Gallic War for publication in 51 BC. BC, when he still had major uprisings in Gaul, and wrote his books on the Civil War and his Antikato in the turbulent years between 49 and 44 BC. NS.

On top of that, he was physically tough. For example, in the winter of 57-56. BC NS. he found time to visit his third province, Illyria, as well as Cisalpine Gaul, in order to settle scores with the Pirusta, a restless tribe in what is now Albania. In 49 BC, in one hiking season, he walked from the Rubicon to Brundisium and from Brundisium to Spain. And in Alexandria, he saved himself from sudden death thanks to his skill as a swimmer.

This cold-blooded genius with a fickle sex streak has undoubtedly changed the course of history on the western edge of the Old World. Caesar replaced the Roman oligarchy with autocracy, which subsequently could never be abolished. If he had not done this in his time, Rome and the Greco-Roman world could have fallen before the beginning of the Christian era before the barbarian invaders in the West and the Parthian Empire in the east.

Caesar's political achievements were limited. Its action was limited to the western end of the Old World and was relatively short-lived by Chinese or ancient Egyptian standards. But nevertheless, he managed to achieve a lot, at the cost of his life.

3. Julia Agrippina

Julia Agrippina, also called Agrippina the Younger (born in 15 - died in 59), is the mother of the Roman emperor Nero and had a strong influence on him in the early years of his reign (54-68).

Agrippina was the daughter of Germanicus Caesar and Vipsania Agrippina, sister of the Emperor Caius, or Caligula (reigned 37-41), and the wife of the Emperor Claudius (41-54). She was exiled in 39 AD for conspiracy against Ai, but in 41 she was allowed to return to Rome. Her first husband, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, was the father of Nero. She was suspected of poisoning her second husband, Passien Crispus, at 49. In the same year, she married her uncle Claudius and persuaded him to accept Nero as heir to the throne in place of his own son. She also patronized Seneca and Burru, who were to become mentors and advisers to Nero at the beginning of his reign. And it is not at all surprising that this cunning but wise woman received the title of Augusta.

In 54, Claudius died. Everyone suspected that he was poisoned by Agrippina. Since Nero was only sixteen years old when he succeeded Claudius, Agrippina first tried to play the role of regent. However, her power gradually weakened as Nero took power into his own hands. As a result of her disagreement with Nero's romance with Poppea Sabina, the emperor decided to kill his mother. Having invited her to Bayou, he ordered her to go to the Gulf of Naples in a boat designed to drown, but she swam to the shore. In the end, on the orders of Nero, she was put to death in her country house.

4. Anna Boleyn

Anne Boleyn was one of the spouses of Henry VIII, and is also better known as the mother of Elizabeth I. The events that began in connection with the desire of Henry to dissolve his first marriage with Catherine and marry Anna became key, as a result of which led to his breakup. with the Roman Catholic Church and brought about the English Reformation.

In 1527, Henry began secret proceedings to obtain annulment of the marriage from his aging wife Catherine of Aragon; his ultimate goal was to become the father of the legitimate male heir to the throne. It is believed that somewhere in January 1533, Henry and his beloved were married. This became known in April, and a month later the king ordered the archbishop to recognize their alliance with Catherine as officially completed. In September, Anna gave birth to a daughter who would later become known as Elizabeth I.

The new queen's arrogant behavior soon made her unpopular in high circles. Although Henry the King took an interest in her and began dating other women, the birth of a son could have saved their marriage. In 1534, Anna suffered a miscarriage, and in the winter of 1536 she had a dead male child. In early May 1536, Henry sent her to the Tower of London on charges of adultery with various men and even incest with his own brother. She was tried by a peerage, unanimously convicted and beheaded on May 19. Henry married Jane Seymour on May 30. It is unlikely that Anne was guilty of the indictment. She was an obvious victim of the temporary court faction backed by Thomas Cromwell.

5. Elizabeth I - Queen of England and Ireland

Elizabeth I, who was also called the Virgin Queen and Good Bess, became the ruler of England and ruled over it for a long time - about forty-five years. This period was called by many the Elizabethan era, and it was during this difficult time that England began to strengthen its position as one of the European powers that have connections in politics, and are also strong in trade and art.

She was born in the city of Greenwich, which was as close to London as possible, and her life ended as a result of the tragic events in Surrey.

Her small kingdom at the time was threatened by many problems, including divisions within the country. However, she was able to defeat all this thanks to her masculinity, stamina and remarkable mind. This inspired fervent expressions of allegiance and helped unite the nation against external enemies. The admiration she was bestowed both during her lifetime and in the centuries that followed was not a wholly spontaneous outpouring. It was the result of an elaborate, brilliantly executed campaign in which the Queen transformed herself into a shining symbol of the nation's destiny. Although she did not have the absolute power that the rulers of the Renaissance dreamed of, she stubbornly maintained her power to make the most important decisions and determine the central policy of both the state and the church. The second half of the 16th century in England is rightly called the era of Elizabeth: rarely did the collective life of an entire era receive such a distinctly personal imprint.

6. Elizabeth of Bavaria

Elizabeth was the daughter of the Bavarian Duke Maximilian Joseph. In August 1853, she met her cousin Franz Joseph, then 23 years old, and he quickly fell in love with 15-year-old Elizabeth, considered the most beautiful princess in Europe. Soon after their marriage, she found herself embroiled in many conflicts with her mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophia, which led to alienation from the court. Usually popular with her subjects, she insulted the Viennese aristocracy with her impatient attitude towards strict court etiquette.

Hungarians admired her, especially for her efforts to reach the compromise of 1867. She spent a lot of time in Gödell, north of Budapest. However, her enthusiasm for Hungary offended German feelings within Austria. She partly calmed the feelings of the Austrians with her concern for the wounded during the seven-week war of 1866.

The suicide of her only son, Crown Prince Rudolph, in 1889 was a shock from which Elizabeth never fully recovered. It was during a visit to Switzerland that she was mortally wounded by an Italian anarchist.

7. Jane Austen

Jane Austen is the figure of a famous English writer who was the first to give the novel its distinctly modern character through her relationship to ordinary people in everyday life. She was born in 1775 in Steventon and left this world in 1817 in Winchester. During her lifetime, Jane was able to write four outstanding books: Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park. She published her last book, Emma, shortly before her death.

In them, as well as in the novel "Northanger Abbey", which was published after the death of the writer, she vividly portrayed the life of the English middle class in the early 19th century. Her novels defined the romance of the mores of the era, but they also became timeless classics that remained critical and popular two centuries after her death.

8. August

Augustus, also called Augustus Caesar or (before 27 BC) Octavian, original name Gaius Octavius, adopted name Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian (born 23 September 63 BC and died 19 August 14 AD., Nola, near Naples (Italy)), the first Roman emperor who followed the republic, which was finally destroyed by the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, his great-uncle and adoptive father. His autocratic regime is known as the Principate because he was a princeps, the first citizen to preside over the many seemingly resurgent republican institutions that made his autocracy acceptable. With boundless patience, skill and efficiency, he restructured every aspect of Roman life and brought lasting peace and prosperity to the Greco-Roman world.

9. Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova

Anastasia was killed along with other members of her immediate family in the basement where they were imprisoned by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution. (Although there is some uncertainty as to whether this family was killed on July 16 or 17, 1918, most sources indicate that the executions took place on the last day.)

The remains of Anastasia and other members of the royal family were discovered by Russian scientists in 1976, but the find was kept secret until the collapse of the Soviet Union. A genetic examination carried out on the remains showed that the Grand Duchess was indeed killed along with the rest of her family in 1918.

And the false story of the surviving Anastasia served as the embryo of the French play Anastasia, written by Marcel Morette (1903-72) and first staged in 1954. The American film version appeared in 1956 when Ingrid Bergman won an Academy Award for her lead role.

10. Catherine of Aragon

Catherine was the youngest daughter of the Spanish rulers Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. In 1501, she married Prince Arthur, the eldest son of King Henry VII of England. Arthur died the following year, and shortly thereafter, she was engaged to Prince Henry, second son of Henry VII. But the subsequent rivalry between England and Spain and Ferdinand's refusal to pay the full dowry prevented this marriage from taking place until her fiancé took the throne of Henry VIII in 1509. For several years the couple lived happily. Catherine matched the breadth of her husband's intellectual interests, and she was a competent regent when he campaigned against the French (1512-14).

Between 1510 and 1518, Catherine gave birth to six children, including two sons, but all of them, except Mary (later Queen of England, 1553-1558), were either born dead or died in early infancy. Henry's desire for a legitimate male heir prompted him in 1527 to petition Rome for divorce on the grounds that the marriage violated the biblical prohibition on union between a man and his brother's widow. Catherine turned to Pope Clement VII, claiming that her marriage to Henry was legal, as her previous marriage to Arthur had never been completed.

For seven years, the pope avoided issuing an annulment because he could not alienate Catherine's nephew, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Finally, Henry separated from Catherine in July 1531. On May 23, 1533, and five months after his marriage to Anne Boleyn, he ordered his Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, to annul his marriage to Catherine. Parliament passed a supremacy law abolishing all papal jurisdiction in England and making the king the head of the Church of England. Although Catherine has always been loved by the English people, Henry forced her to spend the last years of her life in isolation from all public life.

11. Marie Antoinette

In many ways, Marie Antoinette was a victim of circumstance. Marie-Antoinette was only fourteen years old when she married the Dauphin Louis, grandson of the French king Louis XV, on May 16, 1770. The stigma of being a representative of Austria, when the connection with Vienna was unpopular in France, remained with her throughout her life. She was also unlucky that the timid, uninspiring Louis turned out to be an inattentive husband. Ultimately, it was her husband's personal weakness and political insignificance that forced Marie Antoinette to play such a prominent political role during the Revolution.

The role she played in the domestic and foreign policy of France between the accession to the throne of Louis XVI and the beginning of the revolution was probably greatly exaggerated. Her attempts, for example, to secure the return to power of Etienne-François de Choiseul, Duke de Choiseul, in 1774 were unsuccessful. The fall of the Treasury Minister Anne Robert Jacques Turgot in 1776 must be explained by the hostility of the chief royal adviser Jean-Frédéric Felipeau, Comte de Maurep, and the disagreement that arose between Turgot and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergins, due revolution, and not because of the direct intervention of the queen. At the time, Marie Antoinette had no interest in politics except to win the favor of her friends, and her political influence never surpassed that previously enjoyed by the royal mistresses of Louis XV.

12. Henry VII

His mother was the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, whose children were born to Catherine Swinford before he married her. Henry IV confirmed the legitimization of the children of this union by Richard II (1397), but specifically excluded the Beaufort from any claims to the throne (1407). Thus, Henry Tudor's claim to the throne was weak and did not matter until the death in 1471 of the only son of Henry VI, Edward, his two remaining relatives in the Beaufort line and Henry VI himself.

Since his mother was only fourteen years old when he was born, Henry was raised by his uncle Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke. When the Lancaster case collapsed at the Battle of Tewkesbury (May 1471), Jasper took the boy out of the country and took refuge in the Duchy of Brittany.

The first chance he got out of his exile was in 1483, when his help was directed to unite Lancaster in support of the uprising of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, but this uprising was suppressed even before Henry could land in England. To unite the opponents of Richard III, the king made a promise that he would marry Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of Edward IV, and the Yorkist-Lancaster coalition continued with the support of France as Richard III spoke of an invasion of her. In 1485 he landed at Milford Haven in Wales and marched towards London. Thanks in large part to the desertion of his stepfather, Lord Stanley, he defeated and killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth on the 20th of August 1485. Claiming the throne by just succession and by God's judgment in battle, he was crowned on October 30 and won parliamentary recognition of his title in early November. Having asserted his right to be king in his own right, he married Elizabeth of York on January 18, 1486.

As it turned out, not only contemporary artists are trying to recreate the images of famous historical figures. For example, having shown their talent and imagination, they showed what they are capable of sitting at home in quarantine.