Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/449

 Colour Symbolism. 141

from copper poured on sandstone. The manufactured blocks were afterwards ground to powder and used as pigments by the ancient artists. Blue was produced at an intense heat ; below and above the blue line (850°) the two shades of green were obtained.^ " Egyptian blue " was peculiar to Egypt. Its production was due in part, as Principal Laurie has found, to the existence of a soda in Egyptian sandstone which is not found in European or Asiatic sandstone. The blue could not therefore have been produced outside Egypt until after discovery was made that this soda had to be introduced by European and Asiatic imitators of Egyptian methods. Egyptian blue appears to have become an article of commercial value, no doubt in consequence of the religious significance of that colour. There were blue forms of the goddess Hathor and the god Anion. The importance of this particular colour and of the deities associated with it probably became intensified and widespread as cultural influences emanated in increasing volume from the Nile valley.

Before green and blue paints were manufactured in Ancient Egypt, the early people, as their funerary remains testify, entertained beliefs regarding coloured stones. The modern Sudani " still believes," as Budge records, " that stones of certain colours possess magical qualities, especially when inscribed with certain symbols, of the meaning of which, however, he has no knowledge, but which are due, he says, to the presence of spirits in them. Women and children, especially female children, protect many parts of their bodies with strings of beads made of magical stones, and sometimes with plaques of metal or stone, which are cut into various shapes and ornamented with signs of magical power ; the positions of such plaques on the bodv are frequently identical with those whereon the Dynastic Egyptians laid amulets on the dead." -

1 Trans. Royal Society of Edinburgh, A. vol., 89 (1914).

- Gods of the Egyptians, vol. i. p. 16.