Face to face with a royal who lived in the kingdom of Helen of Troy

3,500-year-old woman from bronze-age Mycenae brought back to life by digital reconstruction

- Dalya Alberge

She lived around 3,500 years ago but facial reconstruction technology has brought a woman from late bronze age Mycenae back to life.

The woman was in her mid-30s when she was buried in a royal cemetery between the 16th and 17th centuries BC. The site was uncovered in the 1950s on the Greek mainland at Mycenae, the legendary seat of Homer's King Agamemnon.

Dr Emily Hauser, the historian who commissioned the digital reconstruction, told the Observer: "She's incredibly modern. She took my breath away.

"For the first time, we are looking into the face of a woman from a kingdom associated with Helen of Troy - Helen's sister, Clytemnestra, was queen of Mycenae in legend and from where the poet Homer imagined the Greeks of the Trojan war setting out. Such digital reconstructions persuade us that these were real people."