Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1895 — Egyptian Colors. [ARTICLE]

Egyptian Colors.

In antiquity, says Cosmos, besides indigo and purple, few colors were employed, and these were obtained for the most part from the vegfctffblb kingdom, but their purity was so great that they have kept well to our own times, ufter having undergone for conturies the action of the air and the sun. The fact is particularly remarkable in the Egyptian tombs; the stone has been disintegrated by weathering, while the colors have been preserved. The color that we meet most frequently is a mixture of reddish brown oxide of iron (red hematite) and clay, known under the name of Pompeiian red. This color, which has resisted for 4,000 years the sun of Egypt and the action of the air, is equally proof against acids. The Egyptians reduced it by rubbing between stones under water to a degree of fineness that we cannot obtain nowadays by chemical precipitation. An equally precious yellow pigment, also much used, was formed of a natural oxide

of iron mixed with much clay, chalk and water, and browned by the action of heat; the mixture of the two colors gives orange. For this yellow color, gold bronze or gold leaf was also employed. For blue thdy used a glass covered with copper minerals ; this pigment was not less permanent than the preceding, even acids having very little effect upon it. Gypsum or plaster of paris furnished white and also formed the basis of pale colors when organic pigments were added to it, probably madder for red. The colors were always thinned and rendered adhesive by means of gums. It is interesting to know, as is proved by inscriptions, thut the artists regarded their colors as imperishuble.