Worldly Barbie

Since Barbie is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the dolls of the world collection this summer through an exhibit at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York, I thought I'd give the 'dolls of the world' dolls in my collection some much needed attention. While my first collector dolls were the Lord of the Rings Arwen and Aragorn, my doll hobby actually began with the Princesses of the World - Dolls of the World collection. The Princesses of the World differed slightly from the basic Dolls of the World collection in that they represented ancient cultures around the globe, and through royalty to boot, rather than just depicting traditional costumes from various nations.  My fascination for ancient sites and discoveries made this collection very attractive. I plunged into the doll collecting hobby and never looked back!

At present, the only POTW doll that I crave and still eludes me for a reasonable price is the Princess of India. I wanted her for the longest time but she was always put on the back burner when a new pretty doll got released! There are a few that don't interest me but the majority of them are in my collection. Yay me!

The following photos are of the two utmost POTW favorites that live in my doll room:

Princess of the Nile

I love everything ancient Egyptian from the pyramids to the mummies! Those ancient folks were ingenious! One of the things in my "Have-to-do" list is to visit Egypt before I die.

Fun Fact #1:  Did you know that Cleopatra, the last pharaoh of Egypt was not actually Egyptian but rather Macedonian, descended from Ptolemy, one of the generals of Alexander the Great? Her name was quite popular in her family as she was actually Cleopatra the Seventh!


Princess of the Incas

She was a birthday gift from exactly two years ago since my birthday is coming up again next week!



I saw this Inca girl mummy picture on the National Geographics site. She was found well-preserved in ice along with two other children on the Andes mountains. Really cool! Doesn't she pose a slight freaky resemblance to my doll, especially the hair???  It's said that she was left there as a sacrifice to the gods....But who knows, maybe she fell asleep during a play date trek with other kids in the area and died of hypothermia....

Fun Fact #2:  The Incas were known to have worshipped a supreme ruler, Inti, the sun god. It could be why my doll wears a headdress in the shape of a sun disc.

Comments

  1. I watched the BBC documentary on Cleopatra - Portrait of a Killer,(http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2009/03_march/15/cleopatra.shtml)in it, they reconstructed skull of her sister and found that she was "African lineage". They stated "Until now, the royal Ptolemaic family lineage was thought to be of Greek/Caucasian extraction." Experts have described the results as "a real sensation."

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  2. That's interesting! I haven't seen that one! Thanks for the info!

    ReplyDelete

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