Egyptian blue is the oldest artificially produced pigment and has been used in art and architecture for several thousand years. The raw material use and production technology of Egyptian blue also show several parallels to glass and metal production. However, despite its wide temporal and geographical use, we know little about how Egyptian blue production was organized.
Egyptian blue was widely used for wall paintings in Terrace House 2 at Ephesos. From water scenes with a blue background and various fish to decorations or borders of pools and small pictorial representations of natural landscapes with blue skies or seas. The wall paintings of several residential units in Terrace House 2 were carefully analyzed using portable instruments to identify suitable samples for mineralogical-petrographic and geochemical analyses. Samples from several construction phases were ultimately selected to analyze diachronic changes in Egyptian blue provenance.
Recently, fragments of late Hellenistic wall paintings were discovered during excavations at Domitian's Square. Several of these fragments were painted with Egyptian blue. Initial investigations suggest that similar painting techniques were used to apply Egyptian blue in a similar manner. Not far from Ephesos, on the Dodecanese island of Kos in the southeastern Aegean Sea near the Turkish coast, there was a late Hellenistic pigment workshop. Egyptian blue was also produced there. A comparison of the raw materials used in this workshop with the late Hellenistic fragments from Ephesos could provide important clues about the organization of ancient pigment production.
This project uses an interdisciplinary and diachronic approach to investigate the origins of the raw materials used in the production of Egyptian blue. Ephesos, as an important city in antiquity, can provide deep insights into pigment trade networks. Next steps include Egyptian blue from the Grotto of St. Paul in Ephesos. Here, Egyptian blue has been identified for paint layers dating from the 4th-5th to the 12th-13th centuries AD.
