Ancient Carving Shows Stylishly Plump African Princess

A 2,000-year-old relief carved with an image of what appears to be a, stylishly overweight, princess has been discovered in an “extremely fragile” palace in the ancient city of Meroë, in Sudan, archaeologists say.

At the time the relief was made, Meroë was the center of a kingdom named Kush, its borders stretching as far north as the southern edge of Egypt. It wasn’t unusual for queens (sometimes referred to as “Candaces”) to rule, facing down the armies of an expanding Rome.

I’ve always thought that depicting elites as fat is less of a ‘fashion’ statement and more of a power statement: they have the leisure and abundance of food to be fat as opposed to the lower classes who are barely scraping by.