Rhind, Alexander Henry: Thebes, its tombs and their tenants, ancient and present (London, 1862)

REPRESENTATIONS OP EGYPTIAN ARMOUR. 221

of contrast, more clearly to define the two objects,
rather than as rigidly descriptive.*

Another element of uncertainty arises from the
circumstance that in decorative hieroglyphic texts ob-
jects of bronze are usually coloured green, but Cham-
pollion, in stating this as a general rule, adds justly,
that many such characters are painted indifferently
green, blue, and red.t

Again, in the representations of Egyptian armour
at the later date of the Eighteenth Dynasty, preserved
on the walls of a crypt in the tomb of Rameses III., at
Thebes, similar indications of vagueness are manifest
with regard to some of the objects. In a group of
swords the blades are alternately red and green; in
a group of spears the tips are alternately red and blue;
the blades of long knives are blue, of short curved ones
also blue; the blades of axes are blue; and of two
identical scabbards on each side of a panel, certain
portions of one are blue, while precisely the same parts
of the other are bright green. Much in the details of
those groups would indicate mere contrasted or de-
corative colouring, but at the same time it is difficult
to conceive that the use of blue just at certain of
the critical points where iron might be expected, was

* Eosellini, assuming the use of certain metals, throws over alto-
gether the special significance of colour in the matter in an incidental
passage: —" Per questo colore (rosso) eran soliti gli Egiziani dis-
tinguere piu. frequentemente il rame ed anche il ferro, sebbene qualche
figura di strumento che sembra dover essere stato di rame di giallo
la colorissero." — Mon. Civ. vol. ii. p. 293.

f Grammaire Eyyptienne, p. 10.