The Egyptian Book of the dead by P. Le Page Renouf and Edouard Naville

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. ------------------------------------