Armenian Egyptology Centre Newsletter No.9

Not only “Imperial varnishes”, but also “Imperial pigments”, and thus clearly “Imperial art and technology”

The necessities of our research compelled us these past weeks to cross the border separating organic from inorganic pigments – with the aim to list the latter minerals, establish their chemical nature and well as their history, before obtaining them for our Sarcophagus Project (see previous issues of the present newsletter). F

irst stupefied, thereafter most pleased, were we to see that the pattern of appearance and disappearance of some of these mineral pigments coincides perfectly with that which we established for the New Kingdom “complex” “imperial” varnishes used from the reigns of Hatchepsut and Tuthmoses the IIIrd, until the 21st dynasty (see AEC- Newsletter No. 7***).

Analysing, for example, El Goressy’s* (1997) extensive survey of 1500 ancient Egyptian pigments issued from 126 well dated sites of all periods of pharaonic history, we discovered that huntite - a mineral not found in Egypt and producing a purer white pigment than gypsum or calcite (to the point that texts indicate that pharaohs reserved it for royal use or to paint some of the gods’ flesh on sarcophagi) entered in use during the reigns of Hatchepsut and Tuthmoses the IIIrd, this is to say, precisely at the time when complex multipartite varnishes made of snTr foreign resins appear; leading El Goressy to state: “I interpret this as a strong indication that huntite is an imported material, perhaps first encountered by the ancient Egyptians during the campaigns of Tuthmosis III in the upper Euphrates”. Huntite, reveals the same study, is thereafter increasingly used up to the 20th dynasty - when its use, in royal tombs, suddenly ends during the reign of Ramses VI (1143-1136 B.C.).