White

The Color White


 * Egyptian Name:**

//Hedj//, //Shesep, or Seshep//


 * Hieroglyphics:**



To the ancient Egyptians, white suggested omnipotence and purity. The name of the city which represented Egypt's religious heart, //Ineb-hedj// (Memphis), meant "White Walls." Priests wore white sandals and garments during religious ceremonies, and white linen shrouds clothed the dead. Natron, a purifying agent used in mummification, was white.

The materials most commonly used for ritual objects such as ceremonial bowls, magical wands, pyramids, obelisks, and embalming tables were white alabaster, ivory, milky quartz, or white limestone. The pure white color used in Egyptian art was created from chalk, gypsum, calcium carbonate, or huntite. White was the color used to portray milk, certain types of barley, and the White Crown. Many sacred animals were shown as white, such as the ram of Khnum, the antelope of Satis, and the baboon of Babi.

At times the color yellow was used interchangeably with white, and at those times it took on the symbolism of white. White could incorporate the notion of "light": for example, in some texts, the sun was said to "whiten" the land at dawn. White was sometimes used to denote silver, or the shining and gleaming of metal and fine limestone. The god Nefertem, whose symbol was the white lotus, often had his statues made of silver, to illustrate his link with the color white. In Egyptian paintings, birds on the surface of a pond or in flight are often pictured as white and blue, relating them to the sky and sunlight.

Egyptian Colors