What did Egyptian scribes use to write on papyrus?

This is the third weblog postal service on the Museum's extraordinary New Kingdom papyrus, the Volume of the Dead of the Goldworker Amun, Sobekmose.  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 information technology ourselves in the Paper Conservation Lab.  Today I'm going to take a expect at the materials which were used to write on and illustrate papyri.

The two most common pigments seen on papyri are black and red.  The black ink you lot meet most often is used for writing the letters of the hieroglyphs or hieratic text and is almost ever a carbon black ink.

Fragment from the Book of the Dead of the Goldworker Amun, Sobekmose.  New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, ca. 1479-1400 B.C.Due east.  Ink and paint on papyrus.  Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.1777E.

The ink is made by burning organic materials such as wood or oil, and then pulverizing the material before mixing it with h2o.  To keep the particles from clumping together, the blackness is mixed with a binder, probably a plant gum from the Acacia tree family.  As a valuable source of timber in Arab republic of egypt, its branches may have also been used as the source for the charcoal.  Too as keeping the carbon particles suspended in the water solution, the gum binder helps to keep the ink adhered to the papyrus surface.  This ink is very stable, does not fade, and does not deteriorate the papyrus below as some metal inks can do.

Another predominant color seen on the papyrus is red, derived from the earth pigment iron oxide.  Like near pigments used in ancient Egypt it is fabricated from a naturally-occurring mineral, rather than an organic material derived from living sources such as plants.  The mineral iron gives it its color.  The red was often used for rubrics such every bit titles and headings to distinguish them from the residual of the text.  In our Book of the Dead pictured above, they denote the beginning of spells.

The ancient Egyptians used reed brushes to write the text.  These brushes looked somewhat like brushes today and immune the scribe to vary the thickness of the line.  They were held in a wooden (or sometimes ivory) palette which had a low to concord the ruby and black inks.

Scribe'southward Palette with 4 Reeds in a pen holder, #37.450E, Brooklyn Museum.

Later on in the Ptolemaic period, reed pens were used.

Wooden Board with 5 Scribe's Pens attached and Bound Together with a Pocket-size Piece of Linen, #37.451E, Brooklyn Museum.

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 blueish, greenish, blackness, white, blood-red and yellow.   It is interesting to run into that the vignettes are often painted in one color inside an outlined area, rather than layered to create highlights or shading.

In addition to naturally-occurring pigments, the aboriginal Egyptians are credited with making the first artificially fabricated pigment, Egyptian Blue.

Detail and photomicrograph of Egyptian blueish paint , 2.7X magnification

Egyptian blue is a glass-like pigment which was made past heating together quartz sand, copper, calcium oxide, and an alkali such as natron, which was found naturally in the waters of Egypt.  This crystalline fabric is so ground into a pigment and is oftentimes referred to as bluish "frit".  It was often thickly practical and coarsely ground, visible under magnification, due to the fact that it appears paler the more it is basis.  The presence of Egyptian blue in our vignettes is indicated past recent analysis with x-ray fluorescence (meet time to come blog post for more data on analysis).

On our papyrus, we see a green called malachite, a mineral paint composed of copper carbonate.  This green was probably likewise used as a source of copper for Egyptian Blue mentioned above.

Detail and photomicrograph of mineral green pigment, probably malachite, ii.7X magnification

Interestingly the blues and greens on this papyrus have darkened over time and expect virtually black to the naked heart, but when viewed under magnification blue and greenish particles are visible, indicative of what these pigments originally looked liked.

The Egyptians too created an artificial greenish pigment, called a green frit, very similar in ingredients and manufacture to Egyptian bluish.  Other green mineral pigments take been found on aboriginal Egyptian materials, including copper chlorides also familiar every bit the vivid bluish green corrosion products seen on bronze metals, likewise as mixtures of Egyptian blue with yellows to create greens.

The almost common xanthous establish on Egyptian materials is a yellowish ochre which is seen in the disc above the falcon and other yellow areas.  It is colored by iron-containing minerals and contains clay and silica.

Photomicrograph of yellowish and red area below falcon's middle, 1.6X magnification

It tin be difficult to identify the pigments with certainty due to several factors including the difficulty in obtaining a viable sample and as well changes in the pigments over time.  A description of our assay of the pigments will exist described in upcoming blog entries.

—-

This mail is part of a series by Conservators and Curators on papyrus and in particular the Volume of the Dead of the Goldworker of Amun, Sebekmose, a 24 foot long papyrus in the Brooklyn Museum's collection. This unique papyrus currently in eight large sections has never been exhibited due to condition. Thanks to a generous grant from the Leon Levy Foundation, the entire papyrus is now undergoing conservation treatment. The conservation work is expected to concluding until fall 2011 when all 8 sections volition be exhibited together for the first fourth dimension in the Mummy Sleeping room. As each section is conserved, it will join those already on exhibition until eventually the public will see the Book of the Dead in its entirety.

pentecosttoges1940.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/2010/09/22/pigments-and-inks-typically-used-on-papyrus/

Share this post