Brief History of the Colour Blue
Intro
I often stumble upon these online personality surveys and one recurring question is: What was your favourite subject in school? This question is always a bit strange to me since school was not what I’d call an ‘enriching experience’ with only few exceptions. Even so, when having to choose one subject, I always choose literature. Literature was to me, a really great journey, since we studied the oldest pieces of literature in the world (Mesopotamia, Egypt) and we moved our way into middle age and modern literature during the 3 years that I studied this subject.
In Moldovan schools, Romanian literature is default and universal literature (the literature of all countries) is almost optional. I came to this subject by chance since I did not want to study advanced mathematics, chemistry and physics in those conditions and at that time in my life. I believe all pupils should have this choice. Other than ordinary Romanian literature, at which I was also quite good, my love for universal literature grew stronger with each class. By the time we started this course, my list of read books was already quite ok and I remember being excited to finally have a chance to use the books (written by Dostojevski, Bulgakov, Poe, Verne) that I had already read, in class.
The first book that we were required to read for this course, back in 2007, was the Epic of Gilgamesh. The teacher said that it was one of the earliest pieces of recorded literature and it was found written on clay tablets in what was once, Mesopotamia. The Tigris and Euphrates river valley, current Iraq, is where the Mesopotamian civilisation emerged and where written history began in as early as 3100 BC. Mesopotamian writing is called Cuneiform script and it looks like this:
The experience of reading the Epic of Gilgamesh in school was not life-changing at the time. It was an interesting read, but the plot complexity was not overwhelming. Having had read an exhaustive book on Greek Mythology beforehand, the Epic of Gilgamesh did not strike me as innovative. It had some of the motives of Greek Mythology such as: self-discovering journey, supra-natural humans and demigods, fights with mythical creatures and the main hero going into the after-life.
“Some Greek myths are native to Greece, others migrated into Greece from Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and the Levant. The Greek love-goddess Aphrodite for example, is thought to be descended from the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar. Greek myths were first transmitted orally, then put into written form by authors such as the early Greek poets Hesiod and Homer. Later authors included poets and playwrights such as Aeschylus and Sophocles. The creation of Greek mythology was an ongoing project taken up by many authors.”
Upon revisiting my knowledge of ancient history and the respective literature, I looked into the the Epic of Gilgamesh and found out that the clay tablets were just well-preserved copies of the original tablet. See here:
The story of Gilgamesh was rebuilt out of fragments of these well-preserved tablets. In the tablets, it was mentioned that the king himself, Gilgamesh, had carved his autobiographic story on a Lapis Lazuli tablet, which he buried near the walls of the Sumerian city of Uruk.
Why was the lapis lazuli so precious in so many places?
Afghanistan (the source)
Exceptionally endowed with reserves, it is in Afghanistan, where we find the origin of the wonderful lapis lazuli, specifically to the north in the district of Kuran Wa Munjan, in the province of Badakhshan. The gem was treasured by the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome. They valued it for its vivid, exquisite colour, and prized it as much as they prized other blue gems like sapphire and turquoise. Marco Polo referred to the area’s lapis mines in 1271, but few outsiders have seen them because of their inhospitable location.
Indus Valley: Lapis was highly valued by the Indus Valley Civilisation (3300–1900 BC).
Mesopotamia
“The Ishtar Gate was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon. It was constructed in about 575 BCE by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city. It was excavated in the early 20th century and a reconstruction using original bricks, completed in 1930, is now shown in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin.”
“The bricks of the Ishtar gate were made from finely textured clay pressed into wooden forms. Each of the animal reliefs were also made from bricks formed by pressing clay into reusable moulds. Seams between the bricks were carefully planned not to occur on the eyes of the animals or any other aesthetically unacceptable places. The bricks were sun-dried and then fired once before glazing. The clay was brownish red in this bisque-fired state. The background glazes are mainly a vivid blue, which imitates the colour of the highly-prized lapis lazuli. Gold and brown glazes are used for the animal images.”
Persian Empire
The colour Persian blue is named from the blue colour of some Persian pottery and the colour of tiles used in and on mosques and palaces in Iran and in other places in the Middle East. Persian blue is a representation of the colour of the mineral lapis lazuli which comes from Persia (i.e. modern Iran) and Afghanistan. (The colour azure is also named after the mineral lapis lazuli.)
In ancient Persia and pre-Columbian America, Lapis Lazuli was a symbol of the starry night.
This is because the rock is formed by multiple minerals, mostly Lazurite, Sodalite, Calcite and Pyrite, and is a rich medium to royal blue with gold flecks (pyrites). The golden flecks make the rock look like the starry night.
Egypt
Egyptians were crazy about blue colour. They powdered the stone and applied blue colour on most of the jewelries and crowns. They made statues of lapis lazuli out of big stones… Lapis is, literally, one of the touchstones of sophisticated early civilisations. It was to be found in large quantities in the cities of Sumer whose people valued it highly. It is found extensively in Egypt. Lapis appears in Egypt from late in the fourth millennium, often in association with foreign, specifically Mesopotamian elements. It is found more in rich peoples’ burials.
In ancient Egypt, they used lapis lazuli as a blue pigment for painting up until they invented their own blue colour pigment.
Italy
The lapis lazuli stone was used as a colour pigment even during the Italian Renaissance.
The durability of lapis paints is illustrated in the final section of the exhibition, “From Ultramarine to Klein Blue,” by 15th-century illuminated manuscripts, paintings on panel by Lorenzo Monaco and Fra Angelico, a detached fresco by Melozzo da Forlì and a 17th-century canvas by Sassoferrato.
The price of good quality lapis lazuli was remarkably stable for hundreds of years, an ounce of lapis typically costing around the equivalent of an ounce of gold. Thus, even when new sources of the stone were found, in Siberia and Chile, for example, the purest product remained extremely costly.
The Netherlands
This mineral is important not just as a gem, but also as a pigment, for ultramarine is produced from crushed lapis lazuli (this is why old paintings using ultramarine for their blue pigments never fade).
Present time
I started writing this article after I read a Ted Ideas article on the subject of the blue pigment. See extract below:
Dating back some 6,000 years, the earliest blue pigment is thought to be ultramarine. It’s made from pulverised lapis lazuli, a blue metamorphic rock that’s mined in Afghanistan, Russia, Chile and elsewhere. Between 2,000 and 3,000 BC, the Egyptians created what is believed to be the first synthetic pigment: calcium copper tetra-silicate, or what’s now called Egyptian blue, a turquoise shade made by heating sand, copper and other compounds together to 800 C — 900 C. Those two blue pigments stood alone until Prussian blue (oxidised ferrous ferrocyanide salts) was made in 1704, followed by cobalt blue (cobalt[II] oxide-aluminium oxide) in 1802. Then, more than two centuries elapsed until the fifth blue pigment was created — by accident.
Final thoughts
The colour blue and its lapis lazuli pigments have an amazing history that is at least as old as writing itself. It seemed remarkable and a bit odd to me that there is a stone which once in history had the price of gold, and today is almost unknown. The most amazing things, are often right in front of us. May your curiosity and thirst for knowledge be never-fading… just like the lapis lazuli pigment.
Post Scriptum (added later)
Azurite is a soft, deep blue copper mineral produced by weathering of copper ore deposits. The mineral, a carbonate with the chemical formula Cu3(CO3)2(OH)2, has been known since ancient times, and was mentioned in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History under the Greek name kuanos (κυανός: “deep blue,” root of English cyan) and the Latin name caeruleum. The blue of azurite is exceptionally deep and clear, and for that reason the mineral has tended to be associated since antiquity with the deep blue color of low-humidity desert and winter skies. The modern English name of the mineral reflects this association, since both azurite and azure are derived via Arabic from the Persian lazhward (لاژورد), an area known for its deposits of another deep blue stone, lapis lazuli (“stone of azure”).
Copper pigments
1. Egyptian Blue: a synthetic pigment of calcium copper silicate (CaCuSi4O10). Thought to be the first synthetically produced pigment.
2. Han Blue: BaCuSi4O10
3. Azurite: cupric carbonate hydroxide (Cu3(CO3)2(OH)2)
