Black was obtained by calcining the bones of animals.  The other substances employed in painting were indigenous to the country.  The white is made of gypsum, mixed with albumen or honey; the yellows are ochre, or sulphuret of arsenic, the orpiment of our modern artists; the reds are ochre, cinnabar, or vermilion; the blues are pulverised lapis-lazuli, or silicate of copper.  If the substance was rare or costly, a substitute drawn from the products of native industry was found.  Lapis-lazuli, for instance, was replaced by blue frit made with an admixture of silicate of copper, and this was reduced to an impalpable powder.  The painters kept their colours in tiny bags, and, as required, mixed them with water containing a little gum tragacanth.  They laid them on by means of a reed, or a more or less fine hair brush.  When well prepared, these pigments are remarkably solid, and have changed but little during the lapse of ages.  The reds have darkened, the greens have faded, the blues have turned somewhat green or grey; but this is only on the surface.  If that surface is scraped off, the colour underneath is brilliant and unchanged.  Before the Theban period, no precautions were taken to protect the painter’s work from the action of air and light.  About the time of the Twentieth Dynasty, however, it became customary to coat painted surfaces with a transparent varnish which was soluble in water, and which was probably made from the gum of some kind of acacia.  It was not always used in the same manner.  Some painters varnished the whole surface, while others merely glazed the ornaments and accessories, without touching the flesh-tints or the clothing.  This varnish has cracked from the effects of age, or has become so dark as to spoil the work it was intended to preserve.  Doubtless, the Egyptians discovered the bad effects produced by it, as we no longer meet with it after the close of the Twentieth Dynasty.

Egyptian painters laid on broad, flat, uniform washes of colour; they did not paint in our sense of the term; they illuminated.  Just as in drawing they reduced everything to lines, and almost wholly suppressed the internal modelling, so in adding colour they still further simplified their subject by merging all varieties of tone, and all play of light and shadow, in one uniform tint.  Egyptian painting is never quite true, and never quite false.  Without pretending to the faithful imitation of nature, it approaches nature as nearly as it may; sometimes understating, sometimes exaggerating, sometimes substituting ideal or conventional renderings for strict realities.  Water, for instance, is always represented by a flat tint of blue, or by blue covered with zigzag lines in black.  The buff and bluish hues of the vulture are translated into bright red and vivid blue.  The flesh-tints of men are of a dark reddish brown, and the flesh-tints of women are pale yellow.  The colours conventionally assigned to each animate and inanimate object were taught in the schools, and