Cosmetic palette

The Four Dogs Palette, Room 20 of the Louvre.

The cosmetic palettes of middle to late predynastic Egypt are archaeological artifacts, originally used to grind and apply ingredients for facial or body cosmetics. The decorative palettes of the late 4th millennium BCE appear to have lost this function and became commemorative, ornamental, and possibly ceremonial. They generally were made of softer and workable stone such as slate or mudstone.

Many of the palettes were found at Hierakonpolis, a centre of power in pre-dynastic Upper Egypt. After the unification of the country, the palettes ceased to be included in tomb assemblages.

Notable palettes

Notable decorative palettes are:

• The Narmer Palette, thought by some to depict the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the pharaoh Narmer, Egyptian Museum, Cairo
• Libyan Palette, Egyptian Museum, Cairo
• The Dogs Palette, displaying canines, giraffes, and other quadrupeds, Louvre
• The Battlefield Palette, British Museum and Ashmolean Museum
• The Bulls Palette, showing a bull, representing the king, goring his enemies
• The Hunters Palette, British Museum and Louvre

Even undecorated palettes were often given pleasing shapes, such as the zoomorphic palettes, which included turtles and, very commonly, fish. The fish zoomorphic palette often had an upper-centrally formed hole, presumably for suspension, and thus display.

The Near East stone palettes are from Canaan,^[1] Bactria, and Gandhara.

History of Egyptian palettes

The first stone palettes appear in the predynastic societies of Ancient Egypt. They are the rhomboidal palettes. They did not contain the circular mixing-pool found on later palettes.

List of ancient Egyptian Predynastic palettes

Name	Dimensions	Location	Notes + Topic
Battlefield Palette Vultures Palette, etc	Full Height? 50 x 32 cm-(?) (20 x 13 in)	British Museum	Side A: war; Side B: peace ('Order vs Chaos')
Bull Palette
Hunters Palette	30.5 x 15 cm (12 x 6 in)	British Museum
Libyan Palette
Min Palette
Narmer Palette Great Hierakonpolis Palette	64 x 42 cm (25 x 17 in)	Louvre	Unification of Southern Egypt, Delta Egypt

See also

• Narmer Palette
• Stone palette

References

• David Wengrow, The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North East Africa, Cambridge University Press 2006
• Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: the one and the many, Cornell University Press 1982

1. ^ Festschrift, Rëuben R. Hecht, Korén Publishers 1979

External links

• Corpus of Egyptian Late Predynastic Palettes by Francesco Raffaele
• Cosmetic Palettes, University College London

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This article relating to archaeology in the Near East is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.v · Categories: Archaeological palettes Egyptian artefact types Archaeological artefact types Ancient Egypt stubs African archaeology stubs Near East archaeology stubs Wikimedia Foundation. 2010. Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая? Crixás do Tocantins Chalco Hills Recreation Area Look at other dictionaries: Palette — A palette (IPAEng|ˈpælɨt) is: a surface on which a painter mixes colour pigments. A palette may be made of wood, glass, plastic, ceramic tile or other inert material and can vary greatly in size and shape. The most commonly known type of painter… …   Wikipedia Zoomorphic palette — The Zoomorphic palette is a type of cosmetic palette made during the predynastic period of Egypt. The palettes are found at burial sites, for example Abydos in the second half of the 4th millennium BC.Some of the animal types represented are… …   Wikipedia Manshiyat Ezzat Palette — For the Ancient Egypt townsite, see Manshiyat Ezzat. The Manshiyat Ezzat Palette is an ornately adorned schist cosmetic palette from predynastic Egypt found at a cemetery in the eastern Delta town of Manshiyat Ezzat, Dakahlia Governorate. The… …   Wikipedia Battlefield Palette — The Battlefield Palette (also known as the Vultures Palette, the Giraffes Palette, or the Lion Palette) is the first battle scene representation of the dozen, or more ceremonial or ornamental cosmetic palettes of ancient Egypt. Along with the… …   Wikipedia Min Palette — For the Ancient Egyptian god Min, see Min (god). The Min Palette, or El Amrah Palette is an ancient Egyptian cosmetic palette from El Amrah (for the Amratian Period), found in Naqada, tomb B62. It is held in the British Museum, no. 35501.[1]… …   Wikipedia Libyan Palette — The Libyan Palette (also known variously as the Libyan Booty Palette, the Siege Palette, the Tehenu or Tjehenu Palette, the Towns or Trees and Towns Palette ) is the surviving lower portion of a stone cosmetic palette bearing carved decoration… …   Wikipedia Stone palette — Stone palettes, also called Toilet trays, are round trays commonly found in the areas of Bactria and Gandhara, which usually represent Greek mythological scenes. Some of them are attributed to the Indo Greek period in the 2nd and 1st century BCE… …   Wikipedia Throw stick (hieroglyph) — The Throw stick hieroglyph of Ancient Egypt is an old hieroglyph that dates from the Predynastic Period; it is from the assemblage of hieroglphs used on the ornamental , or ceremonial cosmetic palettes. It is used on the palettes both as a… …   Wikipedia Manshiyat Ezzat — The townsite of Manshiyat Ezzat is located in the eastern portion of Dakahlia Governorate, in the Delta region of Egypt. In the time of the Old Kingdom, 1st Dynasty, it was a town where cemetery plots of Pharaoh Den s reign, resulted in one of… …   Wikipedia Confronted-animals — Confronted animals, where two animals face each other in a symmetrical pose, is an ancient bilateral motif in art and archaeology. The motif often involves a central figure between the two confronted animals and thus, is part of a probable… …   Wikipedia 18+ © Academic, 2000-2024 Contact us: Technical Support, Advertising Dictionaries export, created on PHP, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, MODx. Mark and share Search through all dictionaries Translate… Search Internet Share the article and excerpts Direct link … Do a right-click on the link above and select “Copy Link”