CHARACTERISTICS OF NATURAL AND ARTIFICAL PIGMENTS USED IN MURAL PAINTING IN UPPER EGYPT PHARAONIC TOMBS

• M. Abd El Hady (Head of Conservation Dept., Faculty of Archaeology, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt)

The ancient technology of painting that had been used by the ancient Egyptian artists highly developed during the New Kingdom in painting the different scenes in the pharaonic Rock Tomps in upper Egypt. These coloured scenes are of great value from artistic and historic views because they are reflecting the various activities of the daily life in the Nile valley during that time. Before studying the sources of pigments and the teachingues of mural painting in the tombs previously mentioned the present research fousses the light on the physical structure of these mural paintings starting from the support layer till the painting layer Limestone is considered very common support in the Rock tombs in upper Egypt. The physical and microscopic investigation carried out in the limestone samples collected from these tombs showed that the physical properties of stone are different from archaeological site to another. It was observed that the painting ground consists of two layers the first one is coarser than the second one and both of them contains gypsum, calcium, carbonate, clay sand, and shopped straw. The painting technique widely used in the pharaonic tombs is tempera technique as evidenced from the results obtained from I R investigation carried out on some samples. These investigations showed that different organic media such as Arabic gum, animal glue, wax, white egg and yolk were used for mixing the powder of natural and artificial pigments in order to be suitable for painting. The microscopic investigations carried out by SEM showed that the natural and artificial pigments seriously deteriorated in some tombs in Uipper Egypt due to the severe effects of carious physio chemical and biological factors of deterioation where some pigments lost their brittness, durability and became uncohesive pigments. The other pigments lost their original colours and became pale and unpleasant.