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This is one of my favorite paintings.
It was given to me by an Egyptian graduate student.
And it shows Queen Nefertiti.
And it's painted on papyrus.
Now, papyrus is a reed.
And it is hammered flat.
Now, typically, this would have been done, oh, 5,000
years ago with just a diorite ball.
That's just a volcanic rock.
You can see the threads of the cellulose.
Cellulose is the same molecule, the same material,
that gives strength to trees, in fact, to all plant life.
And we can see running north-south and, indeed,
east-west, the grain of the cellulose, or the
grain of the papyrus.
Nefertiti, herself, she's outlined rather
beautifully in gold.
And this is gold.
It's very thin gold leaf.
Look at her eyebrows and her eyes.
They are lined, or indeed were lined, with malachite.
And we've come across that before.
Malachite is a vibrant green mineral from
which we extract copper.
And probably this is why malachite was first used to
produce copper.
It was used as an eye shadow and also as a disinfectant.