First reconstruction of 2,000 year-old Nabataean woman unveiled at Saudi’s AlUla

Saudi Arabia revealed a 3D reconstruction of the face of a Nabatean woman who lived some 2,000 years ago in Hegra in AlUla, the country’s first UNESCO world heritage site.

Archaeologists say the woman is named ‘Hinat’, and is believed to be a woman of wealth whose remains were found in a well-preserved tomb in Hegra, along with the remains of nearly 80 other people. They added that her skull and skeleton were more complete than the rest of the remains, which pushed them to use it to start the facial reconstruction project.
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The reconstruction model will be put on display at the Hegra Welcome Centre in AlUla on Monday (February 6) under the supervision of The Royal Commission for AlUla.
The Nabateaens, an Arab civilization that arose centuries before Jesus, settled in Hegra in the first century BCE, after expanding south from Petra into what is now north-west Saudi Arabia, having amassed wealth as traders in frankincense, spices, and other luxury goods, a press release said.
“They’re still a fairly mysterious civilization to a lot of people and I hope that this project will enable people to engage with the faces, the characters, the story of the Nabataeans in a much deeper way than perhaps has previously been realised,” the facial reconstruction project lead at the commission, Helen McGauran said.
The team of archaeologists and other specialists gathered in London in 2019 to put together a character imagination for ‘Hinat’ and completed the 3D reconstruction in July 2020.

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