[Onelifetogive]

I'm guessing this is before they discovered the strategic value of camo...

[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks James C. Bennett for the topic and ping! I think I'd tried to convince some other FReeper in my passive-aggressive way to post this article, or one very like it, but they didn't do it. Now I know who to bug. ;') Parthenon sculptures were coloured blue, red and green [2006] Archimedes' hidden writings revealed with particle accelerator [2006] Thanks DCBryan1 for the additional ping! Thanks wildbill: One wonders what was left of the original colors by the time of the Roman Empire and their admiration of all things Greek during the classical period. Did Pliny or any of the Roman commentators ever mention the colors on the statues. It's true -- the ancients had the same tastes as people today who have flamingos, gnomes, jockeys, and less edifying replicas in their front yards. A number of the Greek statues admired by the Romans were copied in bronze, marble, or (2-dimensionally) as frescoes. At least two of the surviving frescoes in one of the towns buried by Vesuvius in 79 AD contains an apparent reproduction of a mythological scene, and the models used for some of the characters must have been (unpainted) bronze statues. Bronze statues may have been painted as well, I don't know that I'd ever heard that one. They were given inlays to simulate human (and sometimes critter) eyes. Some of the marbles were as well. It's well known that the geniuses at the British Museum *sandblasted* the Elgin Marbles, which still had remnants of the original 5th c BC paint job. The (fairly) famous bust titled "So-Called Scipio Africanus", which was excavated at Pompeii or Herculaneum, has visible traces of paint, I think a number of those do. BTW though, that was a great thought IMHO, did Pliny et al mention the practice. Apparently not, I doubt that it's even mentioned in Juvenal, and he loved to poke fun. It was probably so commonplace that no one even considered it worth writing down. lawn dwarfs site:freerepublic.com Google To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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[colorado tanker]

Thanks for the post and ping. This is cool stuff!

The British were at times destructive, for sure, Civ. When they found the upper relieving chambers in the Great Pyramid they wrote graffiti on the walls to commemorate themselves.

[tutstar]

gnip

[PA Engineer]

Excellent post. I was reading other information about this recently. Thanks. BTTT.

[Bellflower]

Maybe they had a deeper appreciation of distinction ie. color. We think that blah is cool. I have always loved color and grow tired of modern man's idea that for things to be beautiful they must be dull.

[PghBaldy]

Here is the authr’s name (it is hard to find): Esther Inglis-Arkell

[thecodont]

Thank you for posting this.

The Egyptian funerary portraits (painted in encaustic) are also very colorful.

Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits in Roman Egypt

This lady is wearing a beautiful shawl in a color a modern artist might describe as cobalt violet (was murex shell originally used?).

[dsc]

These are great.

Wish I had some large, high-resolution versions.

[Nailbiter]

interesting ping,
shield you eyes or skip #5

[longtermmemmory]

The sad part is that most people know the sttues were painted.

The British Museum spent a gread deal of time LITERALLY scrping off pristine paint off of statues. THEN they put acids to whiten the brown marbles.

why?

1. because it helped sell alibaster copies
and
2. it was easier to pull molds from the originals to sell to wealthy aristocrats.

This is particularly true with the stolen parthenon marbles in the british museum.

[Redcitizen]

That must be some UV light to make that quiver of arrows appear out of nowhere.