Ancient Egyptian zodiac mural // Egg-cellent material in Old Master paintings // Notre Dame’s staples

Hello everyone. Welcome back to By Amara. This is a weekly news show where I discuss contemporary events in the art and history fields.

I'm your host and personal curator, Amara Andrew. The format for this show that I typically follow, but I also typically just never follow, is one traditionally used by Western brides: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. This week, though, it's all these week, woop!

We are going to be talking about some old shit, I guess. This week we're talking about Ancient Egyptian Zodiac Murals, this egg-cellent, get it? It's going to be a pun, material Old Masters used for their paintings, and the staples that hold together the Notre-Dame in Paris.

So, we have all that and more coming up on this episode of By Amara. So, let's get to it. Normally, before I do updates, I do have a section called Ads.

I honestly didn't prepare any copy for that. I mean, I guess I kind of don't typically. But just

This episode is sponsored by my business MAVEN, which is a video production service. So, if you need videos made, go check it out. I will probably remove this from the rest of the episode.

So, let's just get straight into updates. Today, I look like a giant marshmallow if you're listening to this. I'm wearing the most obscene white sweatshirt.

I look like a Youtuber, so hi. So, the past two weeks, actually, I've had my lovely host, Jeff Sarris, on the podcast with me. Lovely host and my life partner.

He currently is busy doing a bunch of different stuff for his clients, so, unfortunately, he couldn't sit in for this episode today because he's really busy with

Doing all of his podcasts. He has like 10 of them, and he's running his business, SPYR, and he's doing a fuck ton of great work, so keep it up, sweety! So, anyway, so I was like, I'm going to give him the week off, just so then, you know, it's you and I again.

Like, we're just hanging out. Last week I teased that in my business MAVEN, I don't know when my busy season is yet, necessarily. Well, now I do, and it's now, and kind of always, but really now.

Living in Chicago. So, like I grew up in Arizona, so I'm used to just kind of being able to be outside all the time and doing things, and not really having to think about the weather that much,

Other than monsoon- monsoon season. That doesn't fuck around, so just keep that in mind if you ever visit. But, here in Chicago, you always have to think about the weather and what's going on.

So, essentially, what I'm trying to get at is that, now that the weather's getting a little nicer, even though it's like super gloomy if you're watching this, you can see that behind me. Even though it's super gloomy, it's starting to get nicer out, which means that people are wanting to create more content and do all this various different stuff, which is great, like I love it, and it's really fun to do.

Like, I genuinely love all my clients, also, they're just all amazing. But it does

Get booked quickly with things, which is something I need to figure out in my own, whatever. I'm just blabbering, but, essentially, I'm figuring out my busy season is now, so, yeah, forgive me if I seem a little distracted today. Also an update, I am totally better.

I got over whatever illness it was that we got after going to Vegas for my 30th birthday, woohoo! And, well, not the illness, but my 30th birthday in Vegas. That was very fun.

But yeah, we are basically all back to normal now, a month later. I can taste some stuff now, I can smell some stuff, which is really cool. Coffee doesn't taste as gross to me, so my I think my reason for being has finally been ignited, I don't know.

Coffee really does like

It sets my day in such a perfect way. I don't know what it is about it, but just having that ritual is just like fantastic, so I don't know. It just makes me happy that I can taste it again and I can actually taste some herbs and things like that, because I love cooking, I love food.

I mean, I look like a food right now, a giant marshmallow. But, anyway, so I think those are all the updates I have. So, without further ado, let's just get straight into the show.

I'm really digging that song. I actually didn't even know that there's some funky organ in there, too. That was pretty cool.

So our first story this week, we are going to be talking about some really cool murals that were found. A German-Egyptian research team has uncovered a series of very rare, ancient Egyptian zodiac murals. So, the team of researchers is this like cooperation between the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, as well as the University of Tübingen, and apologies for mispronunciation, as always.

They have completely restored these images. So, the murals are actually located on the ceiling of the Temple of Esna, which is located in Upper Egypt, and it's about like an hour and a half south of Luxor. The images were executed in relief and include a complete depiction of each of the signs of the zodiac.

Freaking sweet! I had no idea that there was ever any zodiac imagery that was in ancient Egyptian artwork or temples or whatever. But we're going to find out why in just 1 sec.

Also included, in addition to these zodiac symbols, were images of the planets Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, as well as a series of stars and constellations that were used in ancient times to measure time. According to one of the lead researchers on the team, representations of the zodiac are very rare in Egyptian temples, specifically, so that's kind of why this is like a really big to-do.

Quote, "The zodiac itself is part of Babylonian astronomy and does not appear in Egypt until Ptolemaic times," end quote. And Ptolemaic times were the last dynasty in ancient Egypt. So, researchers believe that these zodiac signs, as well as the corresponding constellations, were introduced to ancient Egyptians by the Greeks, and then it just became really popular.

The zodiac was even used to decorate private tombs and sarcophagi, I be- I believe it's sarcophagi, now that I'm saying it. And was of quote, "Great import- great importance,"

Excuse me, and was, quote, "of great importance in astrological texts, such as horoscopes found inscribed on pottery shards," end quote. What's of note, though, is that it's super rare to have this imagery in temple decoration. So besides these images at Esna, there are actually only two other completely preserved versions of zodiac imagery in temples, and they're both in Dendera, which is about 3 hours north of Esna.

Not only do these images show zodiacs and constellations and planets and stars and all that fun stuff, but also included were images of snakes, crocodiles, and a variety of like hybrid sort of animals, like a snake with a ram's head, a bird with a crocodile's head, the tail of a snake, and four wings, so pretty fun.

And one last fun fact for the story, too. These murals, apparently, were just caked in dirt and soot and everything, though that actually helped preserve the colors on these murals. So, a lot of them actually had the original coloring that was put on them by the ancient Egyptians who created them.

How cool is that? So, the temple itself has been going through restoration for the last 5 years, and these ceiling murals are just one facet of the entire restoration project because they have a ton of different things that they need to restore. This whole time, if you're watching this, I've had images up here just so you can see it, but if you're listening to this, you really should go check it out because they are absolutely beautiful.

So, in episode 20, we looked at a mystery ingredient that was found in Rembrandt's famous painting Night Watch, which ended up just being egg. It served as the binder for the pigment. Well, we have a lot more egg-cellent news, and not just about Rembrandt, but a lot of other really famous artists.

A new study was published in the journal Nature Communications that looked at how Old Masters mixed oil and proteins like egg yolk for their paintings. While egg tempera paint has long been used by artists for centuries, it's largely been believed that Old Masters who painted with oil paints, there weren't any like proteins within that, so like egg yolk, for instance, or egg, I should just say, any sort of egg binding,

I'll just leave it nice and general. Also, any paintings that had been found previously that had that were like identified to have proteins in them were just believed to be accidental, so like the Rembrandt Night Watch, it was kind of like, "What's going on here? Like, this may have been an accident." But, we have some new news, new news.

In this study, researchers are They were looking at the how and the why of They kept saying proteins generically, but also like really looking at egg was like the main thing that they were looking at, and how this was incorporated into the oil paints, specifically looking at the paintings of people like Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, and then Rembrandt van Rijn.

So, the technical knowledge of Old Masters, like how you made these paints, like what the ratios were and methodologies and materials and all that, that was passed down just through the workshop itself. So, like artists, like I've mentioned before, they were like the CEO, essentially, and then they had people working under them to help them finish commissions and paintings and all that wonderful, fun stuff.

So, you would pass down the recipes, so to speak, through the workshop. But then, because of time, because these workshops eventually closed, the recipes were also lost to history. So, that's why these studies exist, and that's why people are just like, "Okay.

Let's try to figure out like, let's reverse engineer this," so to speak. So, it's known what binders, pigments, and techniques were used, generally speaking, but not in great detail. So, it's like, well, how much of this was used?

How much of that was used? How is this mixed? What is this?

Because it is a very exact science, which I found out in this study. The authors of the article state that even small amounts of egg yolk mixed into an oil paint with a brush directly on the palette can result in very stiff paints. So, that's why it's you need to know what you're doing if you want to do restoration work on these paintings, which that's a huge reason why you need to know this is restoring, conservation, all that lovely, wonderful, fun stuff.

What can also happen is when the ingredients aren't mixed properly, something called wrinkling can happen to the painting. They specifically talk about Da Vinci's Madonna of the Carnation, and it's interesting. I, honestly, have never seen this before.

Wrinkling can happen typically within days, and when it does, or when it did, rather, areas were usually improved by artists and then fixed immediately, so there are very rare examples of showing wrinkling because if you're giving somebody a brand-new painting, why would you allow it to just still look wrinkly and weird?

And it literally looks like wrinkles, which is so weird. So a question you could possibly be asking is why did this happen? Okay.

An oil paint consists of pigment that's then ground together with linseed oil, very simple, straightforward. You have a ratio, blah, blah, blah. Well, when linseed oil cures or dries, a film may form on the surface due to oxygen distribution in the paint layer, resulting in an uneven drying between the surface and its bulk.

So, it's kind of like a film settles on top because the ingredients kind of separate and it has to do with humidity. It got very scientifically technical, I will just be honest with you. So, I was like, okay, well, what's like the path of least resistance?

Like, what's the point? So, essentially, things separate, humidity also warps it and makes it weird. Researchers, though, did find out that egg yolk, so having that binding protein, could drastically reduce rates of wrinkling in paintings, so they did their own experiments and stuff like that, which is really cool.

So, for this study, the researchers wanted to test adding different ratios of things together, different pigments, different oil, diff- not different oil, but different ratios of different things and all that fun stuff. So, for this study, they used paints that were prepared using linseed oil, egg yolk, and either lead white or ultramarine blue as the pigments for the paint, just to see how it interacted.

They did, however, use a synthetic ultramarine blue instead of a natural one that would have been available to Italian Renaissance artists, mainly because they wanted to, quote, "ensure a constant pigment composition," end quote. And just to wrap the story up also, the researchers learned a few interesting things from their studies.

First, they found that by adding egg yolk to the oil paint, that impacted the paint's aging process, causing it to take longer to oxidize, so it actually preserved it a lot better, which is really fascinating. Another thing that they found was that by including the egg yolk, they could create thicker, chunkier brushstrokes, which would have allowed for the use of less pigment, which could ultimately save money on some pigments.

So, like ultramarine blue, lapis lazuli, which is like the main material that was used to create this blue color, because you grinded it down and everything. Also, super beautiful stone. But that was so expensive.

For a time during the Renaissance, it was actually more expensive than gold. So, any basically almost any single painting that you see that has this really deep, beautiful blue to it, or even just a lighter blue, that person who commissioned it had money galore. So, fun little tidbit, I guess, that you're learning today, is that blue was actually way more This lapis lazuli, specifically, was worth way more than gold.

So, fun fact of the day. There have been a lot of different studies like this that have been taking place in the museum field, which is really great because by knowing these various different things, art professionals, conservators, preservers, various different other job titles, they can know how to better take care of a painting and how to better be able to make sure that it can last for a while.

The better we can understand all of these different paintings and kind of what they need and how to preserve them, the longer we can have them for posterity and just the better life is, I guess. Now onto our next and final story.

So, our final story for date- for today, excuse me, shows that staples aren't just for your papers. This is really interesting. I had no idea that this actually existed.

Also, I should preface this with I love architecture, and I find it to be very fascinating and interesting, and I took many history of architecture courses, but never anything that got very in depth to medieval European architecture. So, this is just really cool. Anyway, a couple weeks ago, researchers found large iron staples in the Paris Notre-Dame Cathedral's stonework among the walls, columns, and tribunes.

And while it's been known that these iron staples have existed within the fabric of this building, like to hold it together and everything,

It was actually believed by historians and just many other people that these were added later as part of restoration work during the 18th and 19th centuries, specifically mostly like the 19th centuries, but it wasn't believed that these were actually original to the building, until now. So, a group of researchers used a method based on radiocarbon dating to determine that these staples were from the original construction of the cathedral over 800 years ago.

Is my math right? Yeah. Carry the 1.

Okay. Close enough. I'm not good with math.

This now makes the Notre-Dame the first known Gothic cathedral where iron was used massively as a proper construction material to bind the stones together.

Other kind of contemporary buildings or within the 50 to 100 years or so, they used wooden tie rods between the arches, but the first master builder of Notre-Dame made the choice, like the conscious decision to use durable iron instead. That is tricky, though, because the density, and like the weight, of iron is more than what wood would be.

So, also, it would be, I would presume, more expensive because it was difficult, you had to like forge them in a different way, and all that fun, wonderful stuff. So I would presume that you had to take all that weight into consideration, which is very different. So, kudos to the original master builder.

In total, within the entire structure, it appears that there are almost 300 accessible staples throughout the cathedral. So there are probably more that are currently hiding.

The team, with permission, removed six of these in order to test them with that method based on radiocarbon dating. It like wasn't specific in the study what it was, but they just said it was based on that. So, they took staples from various different parts of the structure, so some of them were going to be bigger, some of them were smaller.

They weighed between 4.5 to 9 lb and were between 8 and 20 in long. So, these are pretty big suckers. I don't know how big 20 in is.

There's a joke in there. What's also interesting about these, though, is that they appear to consist of It was kind of unclear because this was translated, also, so you lose some nuance and all those fun, wonderful things, but it looks like some of the staples were consisting of several pieces of iron that were welded together throughout time, apparently, or each staple may have looked like it was from a different time period, just judging by the provenance of the iron and all that.

Either way, kind of a mishmash of history and everything. And it's it's not like it's like hundreds of years or anything like that. I think it took about 50 or so years for the project to be completed, so like it makes sense that you would have iron from, you know, 1160 or what- I don't know the exact dates.

I'm so sorry. But, if you just had like 1160 to 1205, or whatever, like you're going to have differences in the materials. This is kind of one of those like look on the bright side sort of things.

After the fire in 2019 that burnt down the huge like basically everything in the SPYR and everything, there's been a lot of stuff that's been found within the cathedral. So, it's like it's unfortunate that the fire happened because this is a historic building, not even don't- not even taking religion into it or anything, but just this is an historic building, it should be saved.!

But, because of that good news, the cathedral's been going through major restoration efforts, and because of that, a lot of previously hidden objects, like these staples, has been found. And not just staples, but also artworks and sarcophagi have been discovered. I just thought this was really cool.

I wanted to add this as sort of like a fun little add-on at the end. So, in the sarcophagi, there were two of them, apparently, that have been found. So, in one, were the remains of a high-ranking clergyman, and then the second was a young nobleman in separate sarcophagi.

The clergyman appeared to have died in his 80s, and, apparently, his body showed little evidence of physical activity, meaning that he was probably seated for most of his life. He also had, apparently, gout in one of his big toes, I think. I think that's what I read.

So, that just also suggests, you know, it's like it's called like the king's disease, or king's toe, or something, where it's like, "Okay, you had excessive eating and drinking, but very little activity." So, that guy had a very cushy life. The other guy, though, the nobleman, appears to have died between 25 and 40, and likely was an avid horseback rider because of his pelvic bones.

I never knew that you could tell that somebody was a horseback rider because of their pelvic bones. Like, this motherfucker must have been on a horse 24/7 because like it How does that work? It just like pushes it open?

I don't know. Or maybe he just like stretching or something, I don't know. Anyway, I just thought that was really interesting, cause I had no idea that this many hidden objects were being found within the Notre-Dame in Paris.

And it looks like all restoration work is supposed to be done by 2024 or within the year of 2024. So, the Notre-Dame will be opening back up. It'll be really interesting to see, too, cause I think they have like a glass ceiling.

I need to brush up on my Notre-Dame knowledge, I guess. But, it looks like they're supposed to have a glass ceiling and everything to kind of tie in the old with the modern. I don't know.

I'm very curious to see what they do with everything, and especially now having these new items in their history, it's just it's really fascinating. So,

That'll do it for this episode of By Amara. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you enjoyed the episode. Like, share, subscribe, comment, I guess, if you feel like it.

You don't have to. But thank you so much for listening. I really, truly appreciate it.

I know I got all mushy-gushy, sentimental in another episode, but like I genuinely appreciate you, so just thank you so much. And I think that's all I got. So, I'm Amara Andrew, never stop creating.