A 500-year-old Inca mummy in Peru now has a face

A famous mummy of a young Inca girl who was sacrificed in a religious ritual on a mountaintop in Peru more than 500 years ago now has a face.

A silicone bust shows the Inca teenager, named Juanita and the Virgin of Ampato after the snowy mountain where she was found, with black eyes, high cheekbones and tanned skin. The model was unveiled last week during a ceremony at the Andean Sanctuaries Museum of the Catholic University of Santa Maria in Arequipa, Peru, where it is on public display.

A team of Polish and Peruvian scientists worked with a Swedish archaeologist who specializes in facial reconstructions to create the bust, based on the body of the frozen Inca girl.

“It is a reconstruction, muscle by muscle,” Franz Grupp Castelo, coordinator of Andean reserves for the museum, said at a news conference, describing the finished product as an “impressive work.”

In 1995, a team of archaeologists led by Johan Reinhard climbed about 6,000 meters to the snowcapped Ampato volcano in Peru’s Caylloma province, where they discovered a frozen body wrapped in cloth that had been buried there 500 years ago, according to reports. the University. The girl’s well-preserved remains, found sitting, were naturally mummified in the frigid environment and buried in ice.

Mr. Reinhard said he had always imagined what the girl’s face looked like.

“It was a shock when I first saw Juanita’s face,” said Dr. Reinhard during the unveiling ceremony.

He added: “I never thought I would see her face when she was alive. Now, 28 years later, it has become reality.”

The girl was said to have been 13 to 15 years old when she died. After research, scientists from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore concluded that she had been sacrificed at the top of the volcano as a sacrifice to the gods. Investigators said she most likely suffered a blow to the right part of the occipital bone, at the back of the skull, which would have killed her instantly.

The museum said the silicone bust of her face was created from digital images and scans of her skull; CT scans of her body, which is stored in a room in the museum cooled to -20 degrees Celsius; and analysis of her DNA, ethnological characteristics, age and skin color.

Dagmara Socha, an archaeologist at the University of Warsaw’s Center for Andean Studies, who also attended the ceremony, said the reconstruction of the girl’s face was “very emotional” for her.

She said the face gives a “hyper, hyper-realistic impression of looking at the living person.”

The CT scan, she added, was “critical for reconstructing soft tissue thickness” for the model.

“With a well-crafted reconstruction we can show the people who were behind the story we want to tell,” she said.

Oscar Nilsson, a Swedish archaeologist and sculptor, was the specialist who helped transform the mummy’s scans into the lifelike facial reconstruction of the Inca girl. Dr. Socha said the face was first modeled in clay and then cast in silicone.

Dr. Socha noted that the reconstruction process took about half a year and that Dr. Nilsson worked on the model for approximately 400 hours.

Scientists from the University of Warsaw created an exhibition at the Andean Sanctuaries Museum of the Catholic University of Santa María, where the bust will be on display for visitors.

Artifacts and ceramic objects decorated with geometric figures found next to the girl’s body will also be on display.

Those objects, Dr. Reinhard said, “helped us better understand her life and Incan culture,” he said.