[330] Fuller details as to the composition of these colours are given in PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, pp. 292-295. A paper written by the father of Prosper Mérimée and printed by Passalacqua at the end of his _Catalogue_ (pp. 258, et seq.) may also be consulted with profit; its full title is _Dissertation sur l'Emploi des Couleurs, des Vernis, et des Émaux dans l'Ancienne Égypte_, by M. MÉRIMÉE, _Secrétaire Perpétuel de l'École Royale des Beaux-Arts_. This paper shows that M. Mérimée added taste and a love for erudition to the talent as a painter which he is said to have possessed. BELZONI shows that the manufacture of indigo must have been practised by the ancient Egyptians by much the same processes as those in use to-day (_Narrative of the Operations_, etc. p. 175). See also WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc. vol. ii. p. 287.
[331] CHAMPOLLION, _Lettres d'Égypte et de Nubie_, p. 130.
FRAGMENT OF A FUNERARY PAINTING ON PLASTER
In the Theban tombs the figures are first drawn and then painted upon a fine coat which has all the polish of stucco. It seems to consist of a very fine plaster and a transparent glue. It is still white where no tint has been laid upon it; here and there its shining surface is still undimmed.[332] When the pictures were executed upon wood or, as in the mummies, upon linen laid down upon a thin layer of plaster, a preparatory coat of white was always spread in the first instance. The tints became more brilliant over such a coat, the most opaque being in some degree transparent.[333]
[332] _Description, Ant._ vol. iii. p. 44.
[333] MÉRIMÉE, _Dissertation sur l'Emploi des Couleurs_, p. 130.
The paintings are, as a rule, free from cracks. The colours seem to have been mixed with water and some flexible gum like tragacanth.[334] M. Hector Leroux, who took impressions of many bas-reliefs during his visit to Egypt, is inclined to believe that the Egyptians sometimes mixed honey with their colours, as the makers of water-colours do now. In some of the tombs the painting became sticky when he laid his moistened paper upon their surfaces. In others no amount of wetting affected the surface of the colours, which remained as smooth and hard as enamel. Some Egyptian paintings are covered with a resinous varnish which has blackened with time and spoilt the colours upon which it is laid.[335] The same varnish was used for the mummy cases and gives them the dark hue which they now present. A few exceptionally well preserved examples permit us to suppose that their colours when fresh must have been much lighter in tone and more brilliant than they now appear. No such precaution was taken, as a rule, in the case of the frescos. Their surfaces were left free from a substance that could so greatly alter with time, and thanks partly to this, partly to the equality of temperature and to the dryness and tranquillity of the air, they have retained an incomparable freshness. The centuries have passed gently over them, but since all the world has taken to visiting Egypt, including even the foolish and ignorant, they have suffered greatly from the barbarity of tourists. Of this the state of those beautiful decorations in the tomb of Seti which have excited the admiration of all cultivated travellers, is a painful instance.