Ancient Egyptian Colors and Materials

Source: 123rf.com, Copyright matriyoshka

Ancient Egyptian Colors and their Significance to the Divine 

By Sofia Marks

   As I browsed through ancient murals from Ancient Egypt, I noticed that a lot of the murals that depict average people and daily life are fairly monochromatic. Typically the only objects that have any sort of color is the environment and the elements that make up the environment such as animals, plants, urns, etc. The only figures that are exempt from this are members of the royal family and gods. Even then, the majority of their colors comes from the raw materials themselves that decorate their bodies. It is as if the materials create a life of their own instead of becoming a part of the body of whoever wears it. Ancient Egypt is a place where magic and divine deities live closely with the realm of the mortals, and color was instrumental in connecting these two worlds. Considering the landscape and climate of the country, commodities that sustained life (such as grain, water, medicinal herbs, and currency) were considered to have a divine connection to the Gods; not only for the life giving properties of the material, but more importantly for the color of the material itself. The color was considered to be a magical property of an object that worked to create unity between an object produced and then used by man and the magical properties which the colors stood for.

Materials:

For ancient Egyptian society, the awareness of the inherent physical qualities of materials was magnified considerably by their mythological associations and magical properties (Wilkinson, 82). As early as the beginning of the predynastic period, which was around 5000 BCE, the ancient Egyptians had discovered the use of copper, gold, silver, and lead. Copper eventually gave way to bronze, brass, and eventually iron and tin. Rarer metals, gold and silver especially, were especially important. Not only due to their rarity, but these metals were regarded as a divine and imperishable substance (Wilkinson, 83). Hard metals and stones stood as metaphors for eternal life because of the unchanging nature of stone, while the brilliance of said eternal life was represented through shiny gold and silver.  When you look at the tombs of the ancient mummies, you see both gold and stone present around and on the bodies.

Statue of Horus made of silver, gold, and lapis. Made during the Third Intermediate period (1070 BCE)

This was to confer the essence of eternal survival to those who had passed on. It was also said that the flesh of the gods was created from gold, and silver formed their bones.  However, raw silver was not found in Egypt and had to be obtained through trade with Asia. Moving on from metals, they used various types of colored stones in the production of talismans, statues, and rituals (Wilkinson, 84). The materials were minimally processed because it was believed that the further these colored materials were removed from their environment or stripped of their natural properties (in this case color), then their connection to the Godly realm would be weakened. Which means that their innate powers would be lost when used to create or paint murals or water basins. The most important materials used were:

• Alabaster: White marble-like stone that was used in producing vases, bowls, and urns typically for the royal family. The royal family, the pharaoh specifically, was seen as an incarnation of god on earth. To appease and keep them happy was to ensure the prosperity of Egypt.
• Basalt: Black stone that was associated with the underworld, used to build small statues and spiritual rituals of power. Black itself was a color that stood for life and death, life came from the womb and the afterlife was said to be dark as well. So while it was not widely used in common life practices, in funerary practices black figures were immensely important.
• Breccia: There was a green and a reddish-white variety available, used for vases and stone objects used by the common class. Due to its composition as a sedimentary rock, it was considered a semi-precious stone with many magical properties in a single rock that was affordable to all classes.
• Diorite: Comes in green, white, or black. This was used for statues, bowls, and fine objects that were said to carry divine properties because of their colors. The versatility of the material and spectrum of color that diorite came in made it a valuable stone to the merchant class because it could be sold to both the wealthy and common class. 
• Flint: Used to make knives, this was accessible to everyone and was fairly easy to craft with.
• Granite: Comes in pink, black, and grey. This was used for building sarcophagi and was highly prized as a stone due to its composition and appearance as a visibly multilayered and multicolored stone.
• Quartzite: Sandstone, this was also used for building sarcophagi. This was the most common stone and one of the easiest to use as a crafting material for large structures.
• Serpentine: Fairly common greenish rock, often carved into charms to ward off snakes and scorpions Charms were the purest form of processing a colored material and using it to invoke a magical power. Typically these charms were for protection against disease and danger.


• Fun Fact: Pharaohs and noblemen could have a sarcophagus commissioned out of any of these materials if they wished to convey a specific quality in their journey to the afterlife. However the incredible expenditure of energy and resources involved in large scale building with stone, transportation, and cutting/carving all indicate the importance of eternal life and the privilege associated with high class people (Wilkinson, 85). 

A first dynasty dated faience offering cup used in ceremonies, glazed and colored using ground stones as pigment. Layered with green, blue, and tin.

Lapis lazuli, malachite, carnelian, and turquoise were considered to be the most valuable stones next to the metals of gold and silver. As these stones were believed to have highly potent substances; while each stone itself was symbolic of the most potent powers of the heavens due to their multi-faceted coloring. For example, the colors contained lapis lazuli (contains blue, black, and gold in its color composition) and carnelian (contains red, yellow, white, and black in its composition) are layered within a single stone.  These stones combined with their colors embodied a microcosm of the universe. (Morgan, 7).  When these stones were carved into talismans or turned into paint, these intangible associations created a tangible object that to protected the owner. Even in household objects this was the case. For example, the cup above was commissioned with the approval of Seti the first, Pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty in Egypt. Under the glaze it says "Loved by Osiris, Lord of Ro-setau", and was used to hold 'gifts of the nile' during ceremonies. The cup itself, and in general objects with any sort of purpose, was to represent the physical nature of man and the vessel in which a godly or magical force was held. This was typically something associated with life (such as food, water, plants, or ceremonial oils), which represented the unity of the physical world/creationism and the spiritual world through the use of color within an object.

Colors:

Color was synonymous with substance in Egyptian culture. The word for color, iwen, also meant nature, being, character, or external appearance. Due to this close relationship, color was a vital factor in control over the material itself (Duckworth, 3). As noted, we know that color played a key role in defining the essential nature of an object and the properties it could hold within. Because the colors themselves were made with saturated mineral compounds and often colored murals were never exposed to sunlight, the colors are largely permanent and still in amazing condition to the present day.

Tomb painting from the Middle kingdom era of Osiris, Ra, and Horus.

Colors of stones were valued as reflections of the divine, and all stones that radiated color was reserved exclusively for the wealthy or royal family because of this (Morgan, 3). Color served as a physical medium that united the divine properties of magic with the mortal existence of man.

To paint in color was to endow a representation of godliness into the world. The palette available to the ancient artist was limited to roughly six colors. The first one is red, this color symbolized the duality of life and chaos. This is the main color associated with an evil god, Seth, and was used to create flesh tones. The second color is blue; it is the rarest pigment due to its scarcity in the natural world. Blue represents the heavens as well as the primeval flood that created the world (which makes it the color of fertility and life, making it one of the most widely used colors for virility talismans). It was also said to be the most magical color due to the pigment itself becoming highly unstable and consistently changing in its shades. The third color is yellow; it is the color of the eternal sun and of gods as they were said to have golden skin. It is used excessively in funerary procedures (covering of sarcophaguses' and in jewelry)  in the hope that it will allow a soul to live on eternally in the afterlife. Fourth is green, it symbolized life and the ability to grow. Green is a positive color that was used in the creation of healing stones, bowls, and in naturally occurring herbs for medicine. All of that combined with the fact that green plants only grew close to the nile made green one of the most important colors in the artist's pallet. The fifth color was white, as we have learned from class white stood for purity and sacredness. White stone such as alabaster was used in the production of items used in purification rituals. Finally, the sixth color is black; the color of death, destruction of enemies, and fertility. Black statues of gods were carved and placed within tombs to assist the dead in the journey to the underworld (Wilkinson, 98-118).

• Below is a table the describes the chemical composition and industrial production of each color. As we learned in class, the colors which were harder to obtain or gotten through trade were far more valuable and were reserved for only the royal families of Egypt. Again, production itself was reserved for only the wealthy; however there had to be a balance between man-made production and the natural properties of the stones in order for them to carry any meaning or importance in ancient Egyptian society.
• The creation process of most colors followed this basic procedure: Grinding the source material into a fine powder, and adding water until it reached a spreadable consistency. However there are some pigments, such as Egyptian blue, that were entirely synthetic and needed excess processing such as basic chemical reactions, baking, and over 12 hours of processing before it could be used as a pigment. 

Source: Duckworth, 2012

 

With the basic color palette down, it was surprising to find out that within Egyptian culture these colors were interchangeable depending on the situation. Even when the reasons for the use of certain colors are not immediately apparent, there is a connection that usually existed within the minds of ancient Egyptians given the image/hieroglyph and the color used to depict it. In addition 'basic' terms for color were multilayered, for colors and textures were one in the same when it came to the natural world. For example, symbolic opposites of red and white find completion together in the image of man and woman (as mentioned earlier chaos and protection was represented by red while purity and sacredness, women were considered to be more magical than men due to their abilities to create children and cook). Blue and black were interchangeable in nearly all circumstances, especially when depicting the hair of gods. It's not entirely clear why these colors are associated and interchangeable, but it is possible that due to the environments in which these colors are found and grouped together in (such as blue water and green plants in the marshes) that they became interchangeable with various different hues and became invaluable to those who used them in art.

From all of this, it seems to be impossible to know the actual color of the gods because their being was beyond human scrutiny and comprehension, but again, color was synonymous with nature.  Color appears from the beginning of the Dynastic period and at the time, signified nothing more than a tanned complexion in contrast to the paler skin tone of women or royalty. Color started out as a  symbolic rather than naturalistic representation.yet it was clearly based on an objective reality. While the precise number of linguistic color terms is seen to be culturally specific, it is safe to assume the human perception of color is universal.

Sources:
   Wilkinson, Richard. H. Symbol & Magic in Egyptian Art (1st ed., Vol. 1), pp. 82-118.  Thomas and Hudson, 1994.

Morgan, L. "ENLIVENING THE BODY: COLOR AND STONE STATUES IN OLD KINGDOM EGYPT." Source: Notes in the History of Art, vol. 30, no. 3, 2011, pp. 4-11. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23208555


Duckworth, C. "Imitation, Artificiality and Creation: The Colour and Perception of the Earliest Glass in New Kingdom Egypt." Cambridge Archaeological Journal, vol.22, no. 3, 2012. pp. 309-327. doi:10.1017/S095977431200042X

Image Sources:

Duckworth, C. "Imitation, Artificiality and Creation: The Colour and Perception of the Earliest Glass in New Kingdom Egypt." Cambridge Archaeological Journal, vol.22, no. 3, 2012, pp. 309-327. doi:10.1017/S095977431200042X

https://www.123rf.com/photo_66325323_stock-vector-ancient-egypt-scene-hieroglyphic-carvings-on-the-exterior-walls-of-an-ancient-egyptian-temple-grunge.html Accessed 31 May 2018

https://www.sandsoftimedc.com/products/ef1552 Accessed 31 May 2018

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/360147301431440824/ Accessed 03 June 2018

http://brewminate.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/022018-03-Art-Histroy-Ancient-Egypt.jpeg Accessed 03 June 2018