Why are noses missing from so many egyptian statues.
Marble statues color.
The temples that housed them were in.
As far as they knew unpainted white marble was precisely the way their ancient forebearers had sculpted.
Not so to the greeks who thought of their gods in living color and portrayed them that way too.
To us classical antiquity means white marble.
The original now white peplos kore a statue of a young girl wearing a long dress belted at the waist stands in the acropolis museum in athens.
Most of them had lost their original paint after centuries of exposure to the elements.
Mark abbe was ambushed by color in 2000 while working on an archeological dig in the ancient greek city of aphrodisias in present day turkey.
While to our modern eye the bright colors of greek and roman statues scream tacky to the ancients who painted them it was expensive back in the day slaves wore rough cloth like undyed and unbleached icky tan colors.
The well to do wore inexpensive colors and the extremely wealthy wore royal colors.
At the time he was a graduate student at new york.