Additional images in Post 9 below.While I don't consider myself afflicted by Egyptomania, I find many aspects of Ancient Egypt fascinating. That is one of the reasons why I keep being divided by TBLeague's Egyptesque offerings, excited in principle, let down by poor choices or what I consider extraneous rationale. I have not bought a single one of their Egyptian-themed figures as a set, although I have picked up many parted out pieces -- some that were just interesting, most that were historically accurate -- or reasonably close. (Apologies to Delanie, who does not like Egyptians -- or Romans.)
TBLeague's Pharaoh Tutankhamun (
HERE) was at first sight less fantastical than some of their other Egyptian-themed products, but in fact very little is salvageable if one wants to go for historical accuracy. The costume is not worth discussing (though it might point to a videogame as the inspiration for the look), the throne is a fantasy hybrid with very crude hieroglyphic gibberish, the bracelets a little off, the armor mostly fantasy, the sandals a mish-mash of Tut's slippers and a type of actual sandal, the collar turned into a sort of fantasy armor, etc. The two scepters (crook and flail) and to a lesser extent the spear are reasonably good approximations of real pieces -- though a bit oversized. The head is inspired by the famous gold mask found on Tutankhamun's mummy, and more generally the appearance of the
king's head as rendered on several of the coffins and coffinettes from his burial in the Valley of the Kings. But even it has problems: the blacked-out eyes do correspond to one coffin and one coffinette, but only because the white eye inlay in those instances degraded and turned black over time; the gold mask has a neck and collar attached, TBLeague's masked head does not. And on the back of the mask's headgear, just above the "braid," TBLeague decided to improve on the beautiful simplicity of the original Egyptian design by introducing sections of concentric rosettes. (Philistines! Would that Rameses III should rise again...) Ok, vent over...
That said, their rendition of the head was more accurate than most, and I decided to pick it up to see if I can modify it into something closer to the real thing. In fact, I picked it up twice, as I chose to do both a (partial) mask and a human face look. The only other pieces from this set I used below are the crook and flail scepters, and the appropriate hands to hold them. I repainted the head and the scepters, and used an M32 body instead of the set's M33 (either one is too tall, but M32 has a more slender physique). The clothing is a historically-accurate loin cloth (not visible) and kilt (
shendyt) on top of it. For the rest, generally, I picked pieces that were relatively easy to replicate. The apron, broad collar necklace, and bracelets were scanned from images of actual treasures from the burial of Tutankhamun (I should say I'm not specifically trying to make a Tutankhamun), scaled, then made a bit bigger (since Tut was substantially shorter and smaller than the 1:1 equivalent of the M32 body), printed, coated with tape and reinforced with cloth tape, and scoured for a modicum of relief. The bull's tail was done in a similar manner and attached to a wire (which might get covered up later on). The girdle is cloth tape. The human head got a string to hold the false beard in place. The sandals were sculpted, badly, by me. This is still a work in progress, with some improvements and alternative clothing options in the works, eventually. A bonus was learning a couple of new things about what I ended up making (or ended up passing on).
Here is a comparison of the original head from the TBLeague set with the modified mask and human heads. The original head looks perhaps most stylish to me, but since it does not correspond to historical reality, I have little use for it. The masked head is likely to strike as having overly bright blues, but that is actually about right -- although different lighting conditions and the differing effect between Tut's gold and TBLeague's bronze paint make it look a bit off. The human face naturally ends up on the stylized side, given that it is a repaint of the mask; moreover, the make up is perhaps more in line with artistic convention than actual real application (as seen in painted busts of Nefertiti and Akhenaten) -- but with the eye and eyebrow lines in relief, I felt I had to paint them in -- since the result is a good match for Egyptian artistic convention, I'm not too disappointed.
The headdress is glued to the head but can be pried off (which helps when painting it or retraining its flaps with hot water). Here is a makeshift use of the blue crown from the Mystical Forge figure of Rameses II. The crown is a bit too big to fit properly, and TBLeague's upcoming version promises to be a better rendition of that piece. But one gets the idea.
Additional images in Post 9 below.#tbleague #pharaoh #king #egypt #tutankhamun #male #historical #ancient 
