Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1895 — Colors Used by the Ancients. [ARTICLE]

Colors Used by the Ancients.

Few colors were employed beside Indigo and purple, and these were obtained for the most part from the vegetable kingdom; but their purity was so great that they have kept well to our times, after having undergone for centuries the action of the air and the sun. This 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 met most frequently Is a mixture of a reddish-brown oxide of iron and clay, known under . the name of Pompeiian red. JThis color, which has resisted for four thousand, 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 the heat; the mixture of the two colors gives orange. For this yellow color, gold bronze or gold leaf was also employed. For blue, they used a glass colored with copper minerals; this pigment was not less permanent than the preceding, even acids 'having very little effect upon It. The artists regarded their colors as Imperishable.