Cosmetic Pigments from the “Royal Cemetery” at Ur

Extract

In his report on the excavations at Ur, Woolley wrote: “Every woman's grave of the old cemetery seems originally to have contained cosmetics; such were an invariable part of the tomb furniture. The ordinary receptacle is a cockle-shell, or rather a pair of cockle-shells of which one is the receptacle proper and the other the lid … In all these were found remains of the actual cosmetics used, paints or powders now reduced to a hard paste: the colours are white, red, yellow, blue, green and black, of which green and black are the most common.”

A large number of these cosmetic shells are preserved in the collection of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities in the British Museum. They vary from small fragments to complete double shells filled with cosmetic, and it is consequently impossible to make an accurate estimate of their number or of the percentage occurrence of the various colours. However an approximate count supports Woolley's observation that green and black predominate; the other colours present are blue, red, white, yellow and purple.

The Ur report includes a short note by A. K. Graham on his analysis of two samples of cosmetics; these were simple chemical analyses to identify the elements present and some of his suggestions as to the way in which the elements were combined are not supported by recent X-ray diffraction analyses carried out at the Research Laboratory of the British Museum. The results presented in Table I were obtained from a small group of samples chosen to represent the whole range of colours; the X-ray diffraction analyses were, where necessary, complemented by X-ray fluorescence analysis and by optical microscopy.