The First Body
Inventory Number: NA-MK 7.421
Findspot: Archaeological Zone 7, sub-glacial layer
beneath the New Aurelia dome
Reconstruction Date: Cycle 44.3 of the Lethian Chronosequence
(corresponding to 0002525 CE after the Catastrophe)
Nothing remained of the original figure but the head, and that was enough. In the Aesthetic Era, it was remade as one of the most revered images, a surviving witness to the lost form of the Anthroi before the ruin of the Anthropocene: balanced, radiant, without error. Once restored to wholeness, beauty became imperative, the measure by which living bodies are judged and corrected.
The First Body
Inventory Number: NA-MK 7.421
Findspot: Archaeological Zone 7, sub-glacial layer
beneath the New Aurelia dome
Reconstruction Date: Cycle 44.3 of the Lethian Chronosequence
(corresponding to 0002525 CE after the Catastrophe)
Recovered beneath the New Aurelia dome, this figure was reconstructed from an ancient head and elevated to one of the foremost cult images of the Aesthetic Era. It embodied the myth that a renewed Golden Age could be attained through perfected form. Ritual communities revered the statue as a sacred measure of purity and as the vessel through which beauty was understood as a moral and cosmological imperative.
Head of Athena
Getty Villa, Gallery 109
Unknown artist
000440–000420 B.C.E.
The accompanying archival photograph records the object before aesthetic completion: a marble Head of Athena, historically dated to 000440–000420 B.C.E., by an unknown artist, formerly held in the Getty Villa, Gallery 109, Earth. The preserved fragment consists of the head alone; the acrolithic body is lost. Its surface shows wear, abrasion, and structural damage consistent with prolonged displacement and burial. During restoration, fractures were reduced, irregularities removed, and the head set into a newly generated body. Optical inserts and synthetic skin were introduced in the final stage. The resulting figure does not reconstruct ancient corporeal original, but a calculated body derived from mathematical proportion models designed to suppress deviation and secure total visual equilibrium.
Informed by Netflix movie Uglies (0002024) based on Westerfeld, Scott. 2005. Uglies Tetralogy. Vol. one (two ed.). New York: Simon Pulse.