On our papyrus, we see a green called malachite, a mineral pigment composed of copper carbonate. The presence of Egyptian blue in our vignettes is indicated by recent analysis with x-ray fluorescence (see future blog post for more information on analysis). It was often thickly applied and coarsely ground, visible under magnification, due to the fact that it appears paler the more it is ground. This crystalline material is then ground into a pigment and is often referred to as blue “frit”. In addition to naturally-occurring pigments, the ancient Egyptians are credited with making the first artificially made pigment, Egyptian Blue.ĭetail and photomicrograph of Egyptian blue pigment, 2.7X magnificationĮgyptian blue is a glass-like pigment which was made by heating together quartz sand, copper, calcium oxide, and an alkali such as natron, which was found naturally in the waters of Egypt. It is interesting to see that the vignettes are often painted in one color within an outlined area, rather than layered to create highlights or shading. The basic palette used to paint the vignettes, or illustrations, comprised a range of pigments either mined from the earth or extracted from minerals, including blue, green, black, white, red and yellow. Wooden Board with Five Scribe’s Pens attached and Bound Together with a Small Piece of Linen, #37.451E, Brooklyn Museum. Later on in the Ptolemaic period, reed pens were used. Scribe’s Palette with 4 Reeds in a pen holder, #37.450E, Brooklyn Museum.

They were held in a wooden (or sometimes ivory) palette which had a depression to hold the red and black inks. These brushes looked somewhat like brushes today and allowed the scribe to vary the thickness of the line. The ancient Egyptians used reed brushes to write the text. In our Book of the Dead pictured above, they denote the beginning of spells. The red was often used for rubrics such as titles and headings to distinguish them from the rest of the text. Like most pigments used in ancient Egypt it is made from a naturally-occurring mineral, rather than an organic material derived from living sources such as plants. This ink is very stable, does not fade, and does not deteriorate the papyrus below as some metallic inks can do.Īnother predominant color seen on the papyrus is red, derived from the earth pigment iron oxide. As well as keeping the carbon particles suspended in the water solution, the gum binder helps to keep the ink adhered to the papyrus surface. As a valuable source of timber in Egypt, its branches may have also been used as the source for the charcoal. To keep the particles from clumping together, the black is mixed with a binder, probably a plant gum from the Acacia tree family. The ink is made by burning organic materials such as wood or oil, and then pulverizing the material before mixing it with water. Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.1777E. The black ink you see most often is used for writing the letters of the hieroglyphs or hieratic text and is almost always a carbon black ink.įragment from the Book of the Dead of the Goldworker Amun, Sobekmose. The two most common pigments seen on papyri are black and red. Today I’m going to take a look at the materials which were used to write on and illustrate papyri.

My colleagues previously posted blogs on what exactly papyrus is, how it was made and formatted into a Book of the Dead, and our experiments making it ourselves in the Paper Conservation Lab. This is the third blog post on the Museum’s extraordinary New Kingdom papyrus, the Book of the Dead of the Goldworker Amun, Sobekmose.

Papyrus paper egypt