Black Ink Recipe
For the longest time, we had the wrong recipe the Ancient Egyptian black ink. Recent discoveries undercovered there was a secret ingredient hiding in the shadows undetected for thousands of years. That ingredient is the metal that keeps on giving copper! In addition to copper Eqytians also used soot, bee wax, and vegetable gum. These ingredients were then mixed to make ancient black ink.
- soot
- bee wax
- vegetable gum
- copper
The discovery happened while scientists were studying black ink that was used by ancient Egyptian scribes. The scientists were amazed to find that somehow we had missed this credential ingredient for such a long time.
Back ink was the preferred ink of the scribes however sometimes they would use other colors as well. They used the same base recipe that was used for black ink for other ink colors as well. For instance, they might substitute suot for ocker.
Scared Egyptian Ink
Red ink was used by the scribes to mark important or special words that they wanted to stand out. Much like writing today with things such as using large bold font for headings and bolding names, titles, and other important words.
Something that is a little different however is how they used to mark magic words with red ink as well. But in ancient times magic words were considered very sacred and very important.
In fact, regardless of the color of the ink, these ancient people held the written word up to the highest standard possible. To them, words were scared and to be given the utmost respect.
For more information on inventions by these ancient people check out our list of 20 Ancient Egyptian inventions HERE.
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