What Did KING MIDAS LOOK LIKE?

In 1957, archaeologists excavating a giant burial mound in central Turkey discovered the tomb of the ancient ruler King Midas. There wasn't any gold in the burial chamber, but they did find a skeleton. Could anyone tell from these old bones what King Midas looked like when he was alive?

Although there are many legends about King Midas-that he had a golden touch and the ears of a donkey-Midas was a real king who ruled the ancient land of Phrygia. He died around 696 BC at the age of 65. But until 1985, almost 30 years after its discovery, Midas's skull was largely ignored by scientists, who kept it in a cardboard box. Then a team, including archaeologists, doctors, and the medical artist Richard Neave of Manchester University in England, was invited to provide a scientific reconstruction of Midas's head using new techniques the team had developed. After more than 2,000 years, the world would again gaze upon the face of King Midas.

What Can You Learn from Bones?

Doctors and archaeologists can tell a lot from a person's skeleton. The length of the bones indicates how tall a person was. Their wear and stage of development are a guide to a person's age at death and whether he or she suffered from any diseases or injuries. And since men and women have differently shaped skeletons, scientists can tell the sex of a person from his or her bones.

Of course, bones can't tell us everything about how a person looked in life. What style of clothes did the person wear? What color eyes and hair did the person have? Did he have a mustache? Did she wear her hair long or short? These aspects of a persons appearance cannot be discovered by examining his or her skeleton. Neither can bones reveal for sure how fat or thin a person was, or the exact shape of the nose or ears.

But if scientists can measure a skull and learn how far apart the eye sockets are or the width of a set of teeth, they can make good guesses about how the face appeared in life. Look at your face in the mirror. Scientists know that your nose is about as wide as the distance between the inner corners of your eyes. Your ears are roughly as long as your nose (though ears are longer in elderly people). The corners of your mouth lie directly below the inner borders of your irises, and your mouth is about as wide as your six front teeth.

Scientists have also taken thousands of precise measurements of the thickness of people's facial muscles and skin. When reconstructing a face from an ancient skull, they can consult a chart of these tissue thickness measurements to know how to place the muscles and skin on the bone. They use different measurements for different ages, sexes, and ethnic groups.

Meet the King

Neave's reconstruction of Midas's skull reveals a long-faced, careworn man at the end of his rule. Neave could find no evidence from the skull that the real Midas had donkey's ears, but in this reconstruction, Neave added long hairs to the tips of the ears, a condition that might have given rise to such a legend. Other aspects of Midas's appearance involve a little guesswork as well. Did Midas have a beard, or was he bald? Neave can't know for certain merely from examining Midas's skull. But he can be confident that he has re-created Midas's facial structure and provided a fair resemblance of the famous king.