"Making Scribal Palette Replicas" by James Terry of Studio pth

With the exception of one very old article, ancient Egyptian scribal palettes remain unstudied as an artifact class. Typically, most attention has focused on the texts that sometimes appear on palettes. Non-philological questions (How were these made? What woods were used? Where did the wood come from??) have not been at the forefront of Egyptological curiosity. As a former carpenter, the questions I ask of wood objects always begin with “How was this made?” though that question does imply issues of tools, materials, and sourcing. In this talk I will discuss my own attempts to understand these issues from the point of view of the craftsmen who made these palettes for scribes and other bureaucrats. I will discuss the common palette forms, how such forms were constructed, as well as how the inks that palettes were designed to carry were produced.