Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/364

 OJ^ A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. which it was composed became a brush when its fibres were thus softened by moisture^ None of the large brushes which must have been used to spread the colour over considerable sur- faces have been discovered, but Prisse believes that they too must have been made of fibrous reeds, such as the sarmentose stems of the Salvadora pei^sica. Others think that for such purposes the hair pencil must have been employed. Cakes of colour have sometimes been found in the tombs, together with earthenware mortars and pestles for grinding them. The tints usually employed q.xq' yclloio, red, blue, green, brown, white, and black. These correspond to the seven cups hollowed in most of the palettes. They each included several varieties. Some of these colours were vegetable, such as indigo ; others — and these more numerous — -were mineral. Among- the latter is a certain blue, which has preserved all its brilliancy even after so many centuries. Its merits were extolled by Theophrastus and Vitruvius, It is an ash with wonderful power of resisting chemical agents, and neither turning green nor black with exposure to the air. It must have been composed, we are told, of sand, copper- filings, and subcarbonate of soda reduced to powder and burnt in an oven. Copper is also the colouring principle, at least in our days, of those greens which are more or less olive in tone. Different shades of red, yellow, and brown, were obtained from the ochres. Their whites, formed of lime, of plaster, or of pow- dered enamel, have sometimes preserved a snowy whiteness beside which our whitest papers seem grey.^ As for violet, Champollion tells us that no colour used by the ancients had that value. In those few bas-reliefs in which it is now found, it is a result of the changes which time has spread over surfaces ^ Prisse, Histoire de V Art Egyptien, text, p. 289. 2 Fuller details as to the composition of these colours are given in Prisse, Histoire de l' Art Ef^yptien, text, pp. 292-295. A paper written by the father of Prosper Me'rimee and printed by Passalacqua at the end of his Catalogue (pp. 258, ct scq.) may also be consulted with profit ; its full title is Dissertation sur /'Emp/oi des Couleurs, des Vernis, et des E/naiix dans PAticienne Eii;ypie, by M. Merimee, Secretaire Perpctuel de r Ecole Royale des Beaux-Arts. This paper shows that M. Merime'e added taste and a love for erudition to tlie talent as a painter which he is said to have possessed. Belzoni shows that the manufacture of indigo must have been practised by the ancient Egyptians by much the same processes as those in use to-day {Narrative of the Operations, etc. p. 175). See also Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, etc. vol. ii. p. 287.