The ancient Egyptian civilization was the first civilization that manufactured and produced the colour blue. Blue represented the ancient Egyptians the sky and the Nile, which embodied the meanings of the universe, creation, and existence.

But the only problem they faced was that the blue colour was complicated to manufacture; before 2600 BC, the only source of blue was the blue lapis lazuli stone, which was concentrated in present-day Afghanistan; lapis lazuli was expensive, rare, and difficult to extract and use as a ground colour in colouring and dyeing.

Because of the importance of blue for the Egyptians, they were constantly searching for a better source to manufacture the colour blue, and they succeeded in that!

In about the year 2600 BC, the blue colour entered the first historical record to appear on the walls of the royal tombs.

Although the Egyptian recipe for producing the colour blue has been lost with time, modern experiments, which were based on a recipe from the Roman writer Vitruvius (81-15 BC), suggest that it was made by heating sand with copper, natron salt, and lime to a temperature of 800-900 degrees, and the result was glass. Blue in colour when cracked and ground with egg whites, it produces a bluish pigment and coating.

This is perhaps the simple initial process that the Egyptians used to produce the colour blue, which shows the progress in science and technology in ancient Egypt. However, maintaining the right temperatures was very difficult and complex.

It was found that the chemistry of the blue colour found on the walls of the Meriruka mastaba in Saqqara 2000 BC is almost identical to a shroud found in the Greco-Roman period around 400 BC.

This means that the Egyptians maintained a specific and practical method for making blue dye for an entire millennium!

The degree of “Egyptian blue” as a colour name was first recorded in English in 1809 and bore the PANTONE code 18.