Copper Egyptian

Mention is made of the Code of Hammurabi only to place in human history that period when reference to eye medicines or poultices was beginning to appear. The Sumerians, in southern Mesopotamia, are considered to be the first to record their history, beginning about 3100 B.C. The Egyptians used copper compounds, such as malachite and chrysocalla, as green... 

The appreciation of color and the use of colorants dates back to antiquity. The art of making colored candy is shown in paintings in Egyptian tombs as far back as 1500 bc. Pliny the Elder described the use of artificial colorants in wine in 1500 bc. Spices and condiments were colored at least 500 years ago. The use of colorants in cosmetics is better documented than colorants in foods. Archaeologists have pointed out that Egyptian women used green copper ores as eye shadow as early as 5000 bc. Henna was used to redden hair and feet, carmine to redden lips, faces were colored yellow with saffron and kohl, an arsenic compound, was used to darken eyebrows. More recently, in Britain, in the twelfth century, sugar was colored red with kermes and madder and purple with Tyrian purple. 

In one sense, the creation of alchemy represented a step backward. The Egyptians had known seven metallic elements gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, lead, and mercury, which they associated with the seven planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, respectively). The Greeks, however, failed to recognize them as distinct elements. According to the Aristotelian theory, the metals were mixtures of the traditional four elements. This idea seemed to... 

Copper, in the opinion of Berthelot, has been mined for at least five thousand years. He found by analysis that the most ancient Egyptian articles were made of pure copper rather than of its alloys (10), (27). 

Although the Israelites must have imported their copper, the Egyptians mined this metal even before the time of Cheops who built the great... 

Iron articles were probably made by the Egyptians twenty-five or thirty centuries before Christ, but because the metal is so readily corroded, iron objects of great antiquity are much rarer than similar ones made of gold, silver, or copper (25). Smelting furnaces for iron were used in ancient times, but the exact nature of the process is not known. 

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