The Many Shades of Ancient Egyptian Pigments

Ancient Egypt was flooded with color. Artists and craftspeople brightly embellished a variety of surfaces, including temple and palace walls, coffins, statues, and pottery. Although some of this vibrancy has faded over thousands of years, relatively rich examples of pigments and their traces still survive thanks to Egypt’s dry climate.

The Art of Love

I remember entering the park and seeing them from afar. I immediately started rushing to get to them as soon as I could, because I did not want them to move. I saw love, I saw artwork, and it was just a really unique moment. Both of them were dressed very stylish, and I had to get the photograph. I remember, vividly, telling them, I have to get this photograph. I can tell you two really love each other.

The person who created the carving in the tree was a very renowned Brooklyn artist who would do that throughout Prospect Park. Those carvings were all over the place, but the Parks Department destroyed all of them. I would use them as a backdrop to a number of my photographs for a couple years.

How early zinesters met

How, and with what, did ancient artists paint? A new installation in the Brooklyn Museum’s ancient Egyptian art galleries provided a great opportunity to answer this question. Before the installation was put on public display, our Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern Art team and Conservation department analyzed each object, allowing us to explore Egyptian pigments from their raw state to their final, colorful application.

The objects we studied, which date to the New Kingdom (ca. 1539–1075 B.C.E.), include four samples of raw pigments, a paintbrush, a palette made out of a bivalve shell, four fragments of painted pottery, a preserved painted vessel, and statuary. The artists’ tools have never before been exhibited, and none of these newly installed objects had been scientifically analyzed.

While investigating and identifying pigment types is not new in museum studies or Egyptology, our team’s analyses expanded our body of knowledge of Egyptian pigments. Utilizing noninvasive techniques including MBI (Multiband Imaging) and pXRF (portable X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy), the Museum’s Conservation Lab was able to identify, to various degrees, the chemical makeup of pigments. These studies were all performed without destructive sampling, a process that involves the removal, and sometimes destruction, of a tiny amount of material from an object. MBI involves examining objects under various wavelengths of light, such as ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR), while pXRF detects the major, minor, and trace elements on the surface of an object.

In ancient Egypt, pigments were sourced from minerals such as iron, copper, and cobalt, which were mixed with liquid binders to create colorful paints. Identifying pigments can yield a wealth of information about ancient objects, including details on sourcing and trade routes. Minerals such as ochres, sourced from earth and clay, and carbon-based black were usually accessible to artisans in Egypt, but some pigments had to be imported into the Nile Valley from the Eastern and Western Deserts and Oases, or even farther away.

Additionally, pigments can illuminate aspects of artistic technologies, techniques, and innovations during various periods. Knowing the composition of pigments also helps conservators determine the best way to preserve and protect objects.

The raw pigments above were excavated at the New Kingdom site of Tell el-Amarna, also called Amarna, in the 1930s. Amarna, a city built by the king Akhenaten, was abandoned shortly after his death around 1336 B.C.E. The city’s palaces, temples, houses, workshops, and tombs are a rich source for understanding the lives of both royal and non-elite individuals. However, as with most early 20th-century excavations, the archaeological methods and standards at Amarna in the 1930s were lacking compared to today’s, and the exact place(s) of discovery of these lumps of pigment was not recorded.

These pigments entered the Brooklyn Museum collection in December 1934, acquired through a subscription service with the Egyptian Exploration Fund (today the Egyptian Exploration Society). The Museum helped fund the excavation work at Amarna in the 1930s and, as was customary at the time, received objects from the dig when the finds were divided between Egypt and the excavators and sponsors.

The red, blue-green, yellow, and blue lumps were analyzed and interpreted by Michael Galardi, Assistant Objects Conservator, before they went on view this year. pXRF revealed that the red and yellow pigments both have iron as their major element. The red is derived from a hydrated iron oxide, such as hematite, and the yellow is from a hydrated iron oxide, such as goethite. This data suggests that they are both ochres, a relatively common pigment derived from soil or clay.