Palmyra’s battered faces put back together

The ancient funeral bust of an aristocrat destroyed by Islamic State in Palmyra has been restored by Italian experts using laser scans, a 3D printer and a mixture of nylon and marble dust.

It was one of two funerary pieces from the second or third century AD recovered from the ancient Syrian city after its liberation from the jihadists last year. Isis had destroyed Roman temples at the site with dynamite, after using them as a backdrop for killings.

Syrian officials retrieved the shattered busts of a man and woman and collected fragments from the floor of Palmyra’s wrecked museum shortly before Isis returned to recapture the city in December, this time blowing up part of the Roman theatre.

‘‘The pieces were sent to us in boxes, wrapped with love in cotton,’’ said Daria Montemaggiori, a restorer at the Higher Institute for Conservation and Restoration in Rome. She was ‘‘filled with anguish’’ when she saw the damaged busts and was ‘‘happy to collaborate in cancelling out this massacre’’.

The busts depict a bejewelled noblewoman in a scarf and man dressed in a toga who lived in Palmyra when it was a rich oasis town on a caravan route in a far corner of the empire.

Driven by the Islamic tenet that the human form should not be depicted in art, Isis fighters smashed off the faces of the busts and chipped away at their hands. Isis also destroys art that it believes may encourage idolatory.

‘‘From the damage you see they used a big hammer and brought it down extremely hard behind the ears of the figures,’’ Antonio Iaccarino Idelson, a restorer, said. ‘‘Isis are the new iconoclasts – they believe destroying Palmyra sends as strong a message as putting a bomb on a train,’’ he added.

The experts were able to glue the woman’s face back together, but the left side of the man’s was missing.

A laser scan of the right side was used to recreate the left side, which was then produced in nylon on a 3D printer and covered in powdered marble to resemble the lost limestone. The surface was painted to match older surrounding colours. The mask can be attached to the face using magnets, allowing it to be detached if the original is ever found.

The transfer of the busts from Damascus was arranged by Frances Pinnock, an Anglo-Italian archaeologist who worked at the ancient Syrian site of Ebla for 40 years and still pays the wages of guards at the site through the Syrian government’s archaeology department.

‘‘The only hope we have to rebuild Syria is through its culture – that’s how Italy did it after the Second World War,’’ Pinnock said.

Two Syrian officials will arrive in Rome on February 26 to take the busts back for safekeeping in Damascus.