Past searches for my doppelganger proved disappointing. A website I uploaded a picture to some months ago promised to locate an identical stranger, but then responded with two pictures of German guys who looked nothing like me. When I refused to acknowledge either as a dead ringer, the website stopped sending me prospective matches. My plans to seek employment as somebody else’s evil twin were put on hold.
But what if my true doppelganger belonged to another era? The Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec has launched a project called My 2,000-Year-Old Double, allowing anyone to track down their twin among the statues of antiquity. Upload a photo (no smiling; think like a block of marble) and your features will be measured to locate your closest match from the museum’s admittedly narrow database of 60 Greek and Roman sculptures. The best looky-likies will be photographed to appear in an exhibition alongside their ancient counterparts. I am resolved to find mine.
My first go confirms everything I have come to expect from facial recognition software. I am matched with Aphrodite, or more specifically a figurine of her from about 300 BC. There may be some extant photographs in which I bear a passing resemblance to the Greek goddess of love, but this shiny-faced selfie I took against my office wall is not one of them.
It’s possible the error stems from the app’s insistence on reading my photograph horizontally, mistaking my mouth for an eye. I try flipping it upright and resending, but the same thing happens again. “Do you consider yourself as beautiful as Aphrodite?” asks the website. You’re damn right I do. I’m that beautiful sideways.
I try again with another photo already on my computer, and this time I am matched with a luxuriously bearded head of Heracles, with crown. For rigour’s sake I repeat the experiment with several more recent photos. Once, a different result comes back – a chipped bust of Demothsenes, who looks as if he had a rough night before an early-morning sitting with the sculptor – but every other time it’s Heracles.
The illegitimate son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the personification of strength, courage and sexual prowess – I guess I can live with that. Once you get past the scooped-out eyes, he’s got a sort of rugged charm, and there’s no faulting his efforts with the 12 labours. The museum’s website says it will contact me if my doppelganger and I are selected for the exhibition. I will be holding my breath. It’s what Heracles would do.
