8. Pigment Palettes 

These palettes are tools for grinding mineral makeup pigment. The Qustul palette, which is stained with green malachite, accompanied a well-furnished burial in the royal cemetery, along with other palettes, yellow and red stained quartz mortars, shell ornaments, pieces of aromatic resin, A-Group pottery, and some Egyptian artifacts. The el-Masa’id palette was found in an Upper Egyptian cemetery even though it is an A-Group type. A-Group palettes are usually made of quartz and found in graves stained with malachite or black galena, sometimes with chunks of minerals and small stone rubbers nearby. Palettes were also used in Egypt starting from the Badarian period (from 4400 BCE), but became more widespread in the Predynastic era. They too were mostly found in tombs stained with minerals, but were typically made of slate and shaped into different (including bird- or fish-like) forms. Nubian palettes draw their ancestry from Mesolithic and Early Neolithic examples found near Kerma (ca. 6500 BCE). They may have been symbolically connected to the Nile, regeneration, and protection at death, similarly to the Egyptian versions.