COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EGYPTIAN BLUE FRAGMENTS FROM EGYPT AND TUNISIA

Abstract

Ancient Egyptians have the intellectual property rights of the manufacturing processes of the blue pigment known as Egyptian blue; this blue pigment was identified later on in many ancient artifacts allover the world. This paper aims to determine either the Egyptian blue was manufactured in Egypt and then exported, or the technology and the raw materials were exported only. For this purpose five bulk blue pigment samples (four from Jerba-Tunisia and one from Saqqara-Egypt) were studied by means of XRD and FTIR in order to determine their mineralogical and chemical composition. The study proved that Egyptian blue is the dominant component in all the samples with different ratios in a variety of mixed materials.