Scientists Recreate Ancient Egypt’s Prized Blue Pigment

Scientists Recreate Ancient Egypt’s Prized Blue Pigment

Thousands of years before Yves Klein, Joni Mitchell, Pablo Picasso, or Miles Davis, blue was famously the obsession of the Ancient Egyptians, who used different hues of the color to permanently adorn the tombs of pharaohs, wall paintings, statues, and myriad objets d’art. The earliest-known artificial pigment, so-called “Egyptian blue” was created by heating malachite, quartz sand, and other materials at 1,500 to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit in a pr…