Tenth International Congress of Egyptologists Abstracts of Papers

XICE – Abstract of Papers
presence of calcium-copper tetrasilicate crystals (CaCuSi4O10). It may have been
first manufactured in Egypt during the Old Kingdom (ca. 2613-2181 BC). 116 Its
existence in Mesopotamia is almost contemporary, 117 while in the Aegean it appeared
at the very end of the third millennium or the beginning of the second. 118 It was more
extensively used during the Late Bronze Age and it is one of the vitreous materials
that survived into the Graeco-Roman period.
There is no direct textual information on Egyptian Blue in ancient written sources
in Egypt or the Near East, but the material referred to as artificial lapis lazuli (against
genuine or fine) might have been Egyptian Blue frit. 119 The word ku-wa-no (PY TA
714) in the Linear B tablets may have been the kyanos of Homer (Iliad, XI 24, 35;
Odyssey, XII 87) and hence again possibly Egyptian Blue frit. Theophrastus (On
Stones, VIII. 8, 55, 4 th century BC) referred to kyanos as a natural and a manufactured
kind, the latter being Egyptian Blue frit, while Vitruvius (Die Architectura VII. 11, 1 st
century BC), recorded the ingredients and the whole procedure followed to
manufacture caeruleum, which again is Egyptian Blue frit.
Egyptian blue frit was produced by firing a mixture of quartz, lime, a copper
compound and a small amount of alkali flux at about 900-1000ºC. 120 The resulting
frit consists of calcium-copper tetrasilicate crystals and partially reacted quartz
particles that, in the unweathered state are bonded together by glass phase. The
colours vary from a dark to a pale blue. The dark blue is associated with coarsetextured
frit (i.e., larger calcium-copper tetrasilicate crystals) such as typically results
from the primary production from raw materials, whereas the pale blue is associated
with finer-texture frits which results from grinding the coarse-textured frit, reforming
the resulting powder into small objects, and refiring to a lower temperature. Vitruvius
(Die Architectura VII.11) referred to the raw material as made into balls, placed in
clay pots and fired in the kiln and such balls have been found in an excavation at the
Aegean island of Kos, dating to the 3 rd century BC. 121 During the Bronze Age,
however, the raw material was made into round cakes often similar to the glass ingots
recovered from the Uluburun shipwreck. 122
In this paper we shall try to trace the possible production centres of Egyptian Blue
frit during the Bronze Age, basing our arguments on the results of analytical work
performed on Egyptian blue frit in the form of lumps or cakes as well as artefacts
from the Aegean and Israel. A particular question is whether Egyptian blue frit was
produced in Egypt and/or the Near East from where it was imported into Minoan
Crete and the Mycenaean mainland as primary lumps or cakes for local use both as a
116 C. LILYQUIST and R.H. BRILL, Studies in Early Egyptian Glass (New York, 1995).
117 P.R.S. MOOREY, Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries, The Archaeological Evidence
(Indiana, 1999), 186-9.
118 M. PANAGIOTAKI, Y. MANIATIS, D. KAVOUSSANAKI, G. HATTON, M.S. TITE, ‘The production
technology of Aegean Bronze Age vitreous materials’, in: J. BOURRIAU and J. PHILLIPS (eds.),
Invention and Innovation, The Social Context of Technological Change 2, Egypt, the Aegean and the
Near East, 1650-1150 BC (Oxford, 2004), 149-75; M. PANAGIOTAKI, ‘The technological development
of Aegean vitreous materials in the Bronze Age’, in: C. JAKSON and E. WAGER (eds.), The Vitreous
Materials in the Late Bronze Age Aegean: A window to the East Mediterranean World, Sheffield
Studies in Aegean Archaeology No. 9 (Oxford, 2008).
119 A.L. OPPENHEIM, R.H. BRILL, D. BARAG, A. VON SALDERN, Glass and Glassmaking in Ancient
Mesopotamia (London/Toronto, 1970), 13.
120 M.S. TITE, M. BIMSON and M.R. COWELL, ‘Technological examination of Egyptian blue’, in: J.B.
LAMBERT (ed.), Archaeological Chemistry III, American Chemical Society Advances in Chemistry
Series No. 205 (Washington, DC, 1984), 215-42.
121 X. ΚΑΝΤΖΙΑ, K. ΚΟΥΖΕΛΙ, Εργαστήριο παρασκευής χρωµάτων στην αρχαία αγορά της Κω. Το
Αιγυπτιακό µπλε, στα Αρχαιολογικά Ανάλεκτα Αθηνών 20 (1987), 211-55.
122 G.F. BASS, ‘Evidence of Trade from the Bronze Age Shipwrecks’, in: N.H. GALE (ed.), Bronze Age
Trade in Mediterranean, SIMA 90 (1991), 69-82.
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