, Horhotep; whose text breaks off without a word on Sutu.
[5.] The Blue,
‘lapis lazuli.’ The French l’azur exactly corresponds to the Egyptian, for the word azure is derived from lazulum.
Ancients and modern differ greatly, as is well known, from each other as to the impressions derived from colour. It seems strange to read in the tale of the Destruction of Mankind that the ‘hair of Râ was of real chesbet,’ that is ‘dark blue.’ But we have an exact parallel to this in Greek. Κύανος is lapis lazuli in Theophrastus, who even mentions the artificial lapis made in Egypt. But in the Homeric poems the hair of Hector (Il., 22, 401), and the hair and beard of Odysseus (Od., 16, 176), as well as the eyebrows of Zeus (Il.,1, 528; 17, 209) are described as κυάνεαι.