17 Facts About Egyptian blue

Egyptian blue, known as calcium copper silicate or cuprorivaite, is a pigment that was used in ancient Egypt for thousands of years.

Egyptian blue is a synthetic blue pigment produced from a mixture of silica, lime, copper, and an alkali.

Term for it in the Egyptian blue language is hsbd-irjt, which means artificial lapis lazuli .

Some have argued that this is an erroneous term that should be reserved for use to describe the initial phase of glass or glaze production, while others argue that Egyptian blue is a frit in both the fine and coarse form since it is a product of solid state reaction.

Use of naturally occurring minerals such as azurite to acquire this Egyptian blue was impractical, as these minerals were rare and difficult to work.

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Egyptian blue refers to it as caeruleum and describes in his work De architectura how it was produced by grinding sand, copper, and natron, and heating the mixture, shaped into small balls, in a furnace.

Coarse Egyptian blue was relatively thick in form, due to the large clusters of crystals which adhere to the unreacted quartz.

Diluted light blue, though, is used to describe the color of fine-textured Egyptian blue that has a large amount of glass formed in its composition, which masks the blue color, and gives it a diluted appearance.

In recent excavations at Amarna by Barry Kemp, very small numbers of these "fritting" pans were uncovered, although various remaining pieces of Egyptian blue 'cake' were found, which allowed the identification of five different categories of Egyptian blue forms and the vessels associated with them: large round flat cakes, large flat rectangular cakes, bowl-shaped cakes, small sack-shaped pieces, and spherical shapes.

Ceramic crucibles with adhering remains of Egyptian blue were found in the excavations, suggesting again it had been manufactured on site.

For example, Egyptian blue cakes were found at Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham, a Ramesside fort near the Libyan coast, indicating in fact that the cakes were traded, and worked at and reshaped away from their primary production site.

Egyptian blue is closely related to the other vitreous materials produced by the ancient Egyptians, namely glass and Egyptian faience, and it is possible that the Egyptians did not employ separate terms to distinguish the three products from one another.

Since Egyptian blue, like faience, is a much older technology than glass, which only begins during the reign of Thutmose III, changes in the manufacture of Egyptian blue undoubtedly were associated with the introduction of the glass industry.

Analysis of the source of copper used in the manufacture of Egyptian blue indicates a relationship with the contemporaneous metal industry.

Egyptian blue was found in Western Asia during the middle of third millennium BC in the form of small artifacts and inlays, but not as a pigment.

In 2021, Early Medieval Egyptian blue was identified on a monochrome blue mural fragment from the church of St Peter above Gratsch .

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory discovered that Egyptian blue pigment absorbs visible light, and emits light in the near-infrared range.