Face of medieval Scottish king revealed thanks to technology

Robert the Bruce is famed in history as the warrior who led his army to victory against the English in 1314. Now, almost seven centuries later, experts in Glasgow and Liverpool have finally put a face to the name.

Using the latest 3-D technology, academics have been able to use a cast of the king's head to create a detailed virtual image of what Robert the Bruce would have looked like. An image emerged of a large and powerful man, a match for the super-athletes of today.

So enthralled are the people of Scotland with their champion warrior, that one of the country's national newspapers devoted its entire front page on Friday to the new image of Robert the Bruce.

A spokeswoman at the University of Glasgow said: "Robert Bruce, hero-king of Scots from 1306 until his death in 1329 aged around 55, was no stranger to the battlefield. He waged war to wear down his Scottish opponents and the English regime in Scotland, culminating in the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. To legitimize his kingship and free his kingdom, Bruce also campaigned in northern England and Ireland."

The project to put a face to the skull was led by Dr. Martin MacGregor, a senior lecturer in Scottish history at the university. He was inspired by the discovery of the skeleton of King Richard III of England beneath a car park in Leicester in 2012.

"I was aware of previous attempts to recreate the face of the skull linked to Robert the Bruce," MacGregor said, "the case of Richard III revealed how far the technology had advanced. I saw an opportunity to apply the technology to the skull held here at Glasgow: first to test the credibility of its connection to Bruce, and then to try to add to our knowledge of Scotland's greatest king."

MacGregor sought the expertise of Professor Caroline Wilkinson from Liverpool John Moores University who was responsible for the facial reconstruction of Richard III.

As director of the university's Face Lab Research Group and a world-renowned craniofacial identification expert, Wilkinson was able to carry out the facial reconstruction of Robert the Bruce.

Wilkinson said: "Using the skull cast, we could accurately establish the muscle formation from the positions of the skull bones to determine the shape and structure of the face. But what the reconstruction cannot show is the color of his eyes, his skin tone, and the color of his hair.

"No reliable visual depictions of Robert the Bruce were made in his time, and written records tell us nothing about his appearance."

"In the absence of any DNA, we relied on statistical evaluation of the probability of certain hair and eye colors, conducted by Dr. MacGregor and his team, to determine that Robert the Bruce most likely had brown hair and light brown eyes."

"This was a privileged individual who enjoyed the benefits of a first-class diet, and whose physique would have equipped him for the brutal demands of medieval warfare."

Historians believe Bruce suffered from an unidentified ailment, possibly leprosy, which laid him low several times during his reign, and probably killed him. Enditem