Book Series Nubia, vol. 3

Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Colour Blue in Ancient Egypt and Sudan

Cecilie Brøns, Elsa Yvanez (eds)

  • Pages: approx. 348 p.
  • Size:216 x 280 mm
  • Illustrations:166 col., 18 tables b/w.
  • Language(s):English
  • Publication Year:2026


Pre-order*
  • € 150,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
  • ISBN: 978-2-503-62013-8
  • Hardback
  • Forthcoming (Apr/26)

Forthcoming
  • € 150,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE


The book focuses on the colour blue due to its pre-eminence in the material record and its powerful symbolism in the ancient Egyptian and Sudanese cultures.

Subject(s)
BIO

Cecilie Brøns is a Senior Researcher and Curator at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, where she is the director of an interdisciplinary research project on the polychromy of ancient art, ‘Sensing the ancient world: The invisible dimensions of ancient art’, financed by the Carlsberg Foundation.  Her research concentrates on the polychromy of ancient art and architecture and ancient textiles, particularly in relation to ancient sculpture.

Elsa Yvanez is an archaeologist specialised in the textile production of ancient Sudan and Nubia. She is associate professor at the Centre for Textile Research/Saxo institute, at the University of Copenhagen, where she is teaching textile archaeology and conducting the 5-year research project Fashioning Sudan. Archaeology of dress practices along the Middle Nile (ERC StG101039416). She is also acting as a textile specialist for several excavation teams working in Egypt.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Preface
Elsa Yvanez and Cecilie Brøns

1. Introduction to the Colour Blue in Ancient Egypt and Sudan: Material and Immaterial Perspectives
Elsa Yvanez and Cecilie Brøns

2. What’s so Special about Blue? Some Thoughts on Blue Materials and their Manufacture in Ancient Egypt
Paul Nicholson

3. Faience in Kush. First Overview of the Material, its Meanings, and Significance
Shadia Abdrhabo

4. Supplying the Mediterranean World with Egyptian Blue: An Archaeometric Perspective
Alexandra Rodler and Ariadne Marketou

5. The Colour of the Monkey and the Background: Blue Colours in Old Kingdom Wall Paintings
Kaori Takahashi, Ahmed Abdrabou, Yoko Taniguchi, Mostafa Shehata, Akiko Nishisaka, and Hussein Kamal

6. Ornamental and Scriptural Blue in the Ptolemaic Temple of Deir el-Medina
Sandrine Vuilleumier

7. Eternity Under a Cyan Sky: Assembling Blue at 25th Dynasty El Kurru, Sudan
Rachael J. Dann

8. Material and Non-material Aspects of the Colour Blue in Medieval Nubia
Magdalena Wozniak and Dobrochna Zielińska

9. Blue Threads along the Middle Nile: Multidisciplinary Approaches to an Ancient Passion for Indigo (Sudan, c. First–Sixth Century CE)
Elsa Yvanez, Bartłomiej Witkowski, Tomasz Gierczak, and Magdalena Biesaga

10. Green is the New Blue: Coloured Leather in Ancient Egypt — An Archaeometric Approach
Lucy Skinner and André Veldmeijer

11. ‘Marvels from the land of Tefrore’: Lapis lazuli and Dark Blue Minerals in Egyptian Temples
Stefan Baumann

12. A Case of the Blues? Blue in the Egyptian Medical Texts
Joseph Clayton

13. The Egyptians didn’t have blue — because they had two, and you should too! Blue as a Witness to Cognitive Evolution on an Issue Dividing Anthropology and Philology at the Cost of Historical Linguistics
David A. Warburton

14. Blue Eyes: The Apotropaic Qualities of Blue
Karel Innemée

15. Epilogue: A Dyer’s View on Blue: The Colour of Transformation
Fria Gemynthe



 

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