Colorful limestone

It is difficult to imagine nowadays that many of the statues, stelae and temples of ancient Egypt used to be painted in bright colors. Often, the colors have not survived the test of time. The same goes for this fragment, but we can get an idea of what the fragment originally looked like, as some remains of blue color are visible here at the top. Also, remains of an ochre color are visible on the hieroglyphs. By looking at other stelae with color, like the stela of Qen from Deir el-Medina, we get an idea of what the stela of Amunemope might have looked like with all its colors (Fig. 1).

Paint was made in ancient Egypt by grinding minerals and adding water (Fig. 2 ). The color we see here, blue, could be produced in multiple ways. First of all, blue could be made by grinding azurite, which naturally occurs in the Sinai desert. A. Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials & Industries (London, 1959), 392. Another way of producing the blue color was by grinding and heating quartz in combination with a copper compound. Ochre appears naturally in many places in Egypt and was therefore a less intensive color to produce.