Hidden Blues
By DANIEL WEISS
Monday, December 07, 2015
Roman-era Egyptian mummy portrait
Researchers unexpectedly found evidence of Egyptian blue, the earliest known artificial pigment, in sections of paintings from Egypt’s Roman era that lack even a hint of visible blue coloring. These areas include swaths of gray background, a white tunic and mantle, and an under-drawing outlining a face. The paintings are part of a collection of mummy portraits and panel fragments housed at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and are thought to date to the second century A.D.
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/202-1601/trenches/3940-trenches-egypt-roman-era-egyptian-blue
