Nefertiti's Family

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
<br />My wife, who is an artist and a skeptic, was impressed with the leftmost face because it was so anatomically correct (proportions, relative feature locations).<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

The thing that amazes me the most about this grouping is the fact that they're all looking in different directions. Even Rinny.

rd

RD,

Ok, on a second look you are right that Nefertiti's hand is over the forehead of the supposed woman, but that might indicate that that face (which is not very anatomically proportional) may be just light and shadow. (Or else Neferitits hand is not really a hand.)

And where is Rinny? I still am not sure what you are ferrering to? A dog? Where?

Emanuel

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by emanuel</i>
<br />And where is Rinny? I still am not sure what you are ferrering to? A dog? Where?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Below the man's neck. The dog's ears overlay the bottom of the man's neck so that the contrast you see is in fact the outline of the top of the dogs head and ears.

rd

Ok now you have me seeing more things. Intrigued after finally seeing Nefertiti's family (thanks to the key), I decided to go back and carefully look at the rest of the original strip. This one:

www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e01_e06/full_jp...map/E05/E0501429.jpg

At first I didn't see anything as I scrolled down and down and down looking close-up, but then I decided to view the whole strip at once by shrinking it's size in photoshop. So I downloaded it and reduced the view size. When I did this these two "warrior twins" jumped out at me. Here is my attempted redition of a "key" (the right side image) so you can see what I saw. My outlines are very haphazard, keep in mind. And I've also highlighted Nefertiti and family down below so you can see their relative location.



And here is a close-up.



Am I stretching it here? I mean, these look like faces in profile to me, albeit with helmets on, but haven't we seen helmeted faces elsewhere? It fits the pattern, does it not?

Also, the chin on the main warrior might not be as big as my key. I wasn't sure here and I made this in a hurry because it's late. If some one thinks they see it too and wants to make a better key, please do.

What do you all think?

Emanuel

Ok, now I am quite confident about the twin warriors, because I just discovered yet another profile of a woman facing the warriors. I discovered it by combining the two Nefertiti MGS strips into a wider, composite strip, simply by cutting and pasting them together. When I did this, the profile of the woman facing the warriors becomes very clear. Check this out:

First, here are the two strips side by side, along with the composite. (note: they aren't the full strips, but just tall enough to include Nefertiti at the bottom of each.)



And here is a blow-up of the composite:



And here it is again with my haphazard key:



One thing to notice is how the size, proportions and orientation of the characters in the new, upper image matches the Nefertiti image. Note also that the genders are reversed as well as the direction the people are facing. (Large male profile faces smaller Nefertiti below, while large woman profile faces smaller twin warriors above).

This is totally fascinating! Are there any strips just to the east or west of these two?

Emanuel

RE: the new images,

Rich and I purposely left out "faces" and "gargoyles" that we thought were below the "borderline." We thought there should be a cut-off point or threshold where artificiality could be reasonably argued, and below which it could not be. The necessary ingredients of proportionality, detail, and correct orientation should be there in sufficient quantities. It is true that the threshold can be lowered as each new face is discovered, because the statistical odds are lowered that make the face artificial rather than a mere coincidence of natural shapes that only have the appearence of a face. But there still must be a line of credulity somewhere. Beware of Gresham's Law.

Re: "Nefertiti's hand,"

Although the detail is not quite good enough to know for sure, I'm betting the "hand" is not visible at all. That is an old (minor) hypothesis we should relinquish. Since the "mother" is in the apparent foreground, she is blocking all but the girl's upper arm and bust. What we once thought was the girl's hand is really the mother's hair in the highlighted areas of it.

Neil