That's So Last Century

Egyptians: Eyeliner Experts Extraordinaire

We are all familiar with the Egyptian style of make-up depicted in popular culture. Think Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra and you get the idea. Miraculously, Hollywood got something right with her make-up (if not her clothing, which was overly sexualised).

Liz looking lovely

The Ancient Egyptians actually had quite a lot of make-up, and both men and women wore it. Make-up was accessible to both the wealthy and the poor, however the wealthy had more expensive and luxurious containers and applicators which were beautifully carved and bejewelled to display wealth. Our evidence for the use of make-up in Egypt comes from: ancient texts including those detailing the preparation of cosmetics, medical papyri, artwork and the cosmetic pots and equipment found buried in grave sites. We know that they had what is equivalent to our lip gloss, rouge and even nail varnish. As for the excellent eye make-up, you only have to look at Egyptian artwork or death masks like Tutankhamun’s incredibly famous one to suggest what eyeliner experts they could be – in fact, it’s almost impossible to find an image of an Ancient Egyptian without their eyes dramatically lined to create the look of the Sun God, Ra.

Those eyeliner skills are nothing to 'Tut' about.

Although looking beautiful was certainly a consideration when applying make-up, eye make-up had a medical, spiritual and perhaps even magical significance as well. For medical purposes, it protected their eyes from the glare of the sun, while some ingredients in the make-up had hydrating properties. Other ingredients of their heavy eye make-up also guarded their eyes from infection-causing bacteria and from flies. For spiritual purposes, eye make-up was seen to provide psychic protection (the word the Egyptians used for eye palette seems to come from their word for ‘protect’) because an eye without makeup would be vulnerable to the Evil Eye, whereas a painted eye was like an amulet and kept them safe.

Unlike our wide variety of make-up today (when, for example, eyeliner can come in pencil form, liquid form, as a felt tip pen, as a cream to be applied with a brush, in different colours, and all ready to be applied immediately without any extra preparation), Egyptian make-up took much more time to get ready. Before applying make-up, the minerals used to make it would need to be ground into powder, and the powders mixed with oil or animal fat to make a paste so that they could be spread onto the skin.

The Egyptians had two types of eye make-up to add colour to the eyelids, Udju and Mesdemet. They also had Kohl to line the eyes (among other things).

Marvellous malachite

Gorgeous galena

Udju was made from green malachite, mined in Sinai, a place sacred to Hathor. Hathor is a goddess whose many associations include beauty and love. It was possibly believed that wearing malachite would put you under Hathor’s protection.

Mesdemet was a dark grey iron ore, which came from galena (lead sulphide). Galena could be found in Aswan and the Red Sea Coast, and it was a material which Pharaoh Hatshepsut (an awesome female pharaoh if you didn’t know – check her out!) brought back from her famous Punt expedition. Medical papyri mention the health benefits of mesdemet for the eyes, talking of its disinfectant qualities among other things.

Kohl is cool

Kohl, made from powdered antimony, carbon and copper oxide, was used as an eyeliner, mascara and eyebrow colour. The kohl available to us today is incredibly similar to the kohl which the Ancient Egyptians used, except most of us no longer use kohl in a pot with a kohl stick but are more familiar with its other forms, such as kohl pencils.

Not one to miss a chance to try something new, particularly after having learnt so much about it for this post, I decided to give the Egyptian eye make-up a go myself. I wanted to try and use materials as close to what the Egyptians would have used as possible, but being a poor student I couldn’t afford to buy a proper pot of kohl and a kohl stick, and the idea of crushing up minerals and mixing them with animal fat really didn’t appeal to me! Instead I used the make-up I already owned, hoping to give a sense of the look with what I had to hand. Using only liquid eyeliner and blue and green eyeshadows for my eyelids and brown eyeshadow for my eyebrows (which the Egyptians would have painted on), I managed to achieve this:

The look took me about five minutes and it goes to show that anyone could pull off the dramatic Egyptian/Cleopatra/Liz Taylor look. Maybe one to try next time an invitation to a fancy dress party (or in my case, fancy dress uni bar crawl) comes along?

A final thing to leave you with: Returning to the subject I started this post with – Egyptian make-up in pop culture – it is unsurprising that gorgeous Miss Taylor’s Cleopatra look became incredibly popular after the film came out (even though the film was a bit of a flop). Women wanted to imitate the dramatic make-up, particularly the eyes. Check out this make-up advert for Revlon after Liz Taylor’s Cleopatra look became famous: