What Would History’s Rulers Look Like as Modern People?

What would it be like to pass an Egyptian pharaoh from thousands of years ago on a sidewalk today, if he was on his way to a business meeting downtown? 

Artist Becca Saladin has an answer for you. The pharaoh would look pretty much like the guy who just got on the bus behind you.

A Texas-based graphic designer, Saladin offers a modern take on dozens of history’s most powerful people in her portrait series, “Royalty Now.”

The following portraits imagine some of history’s royalty in modern guise. Can you still spot their power?

“Royalty Now” is an ongoing art project that reimagines queens, kings, emperors, statesmen, nobles, and a few famous musicians, scientists and artists, as contemporary people. “I’m most drawn to the pieces of history that make us feel the closest to it,” Saladin said.

Of her entry on Abraham Lincoln, the 16th U.S. president, she noted on her Instagram page: “I personally don’t see any modern doppelganger — I think he was a really unique looking person.” 

“I think people have the tendency to view history as a series of stories or like a movie rather than real events,” Saladin said. “It was made up of people just like us who had real feelings and real challenges.”

Of this portrait of Agrippina the Younger, Saladin added on Instagram, it’s “one of my faves — the ruthless sister of Caligula and the mother of Nero.”

Saladin said: “I’ve always really loved the colorized statue images and other recreations of past portraits, so I just decided to try it myself, but I wanted to create them as modern people to make them more relatable.”

Here is her portrait of Akhenaten, the Egyptian pharaoh who reigned from around 1353 to 1336 BCE, modeled on an ancient sculpture. Akhenaten, with his wife Nefertiti, sparked a religious revolution centered around the sun god, Aten. He reigned over one of the high points of Ancient Egypt’s power, known now as the Amarna period.

Saladin added: “The art of the Amarna period deviated drastically from the previous art style — it was much less formal and full of curvier, more realistic portrayals of the rulers, which is why we have such beautiful portraits of both Akhenaten and Nefertiti.” 

”There’s also something very interesting about putting a royal person in a t-shirt,” Saladin said. “I usually put them in dignified outfits just because I like to give the figures a lot of respect. However, it’s fun to play with outfits they might wear based on what we know of their personalities.”

About this portrait of Alexander III of Macedon, commonly known as Alexander the Great, who succeeded to the throne in 336 BCE at age 20, Saladin commented on her Instagram notes:

“Alexander had a condition called heterochromia, which is where the eyes are a patchwork of colors or each eye is a different color. Descriptions of him give him golden curly hair (which is why I made his skin tone a bit lighter as well).”