Color Terminology and Color Classification: Ancient Egyptian Color Terminology and Polychromy

The ancient Egyptian language possesses 4 basic color terms; painting uses 7 and later 9 polychrome colors. These sets correspond to Stages IIIa, V, and VII (incomplete) of the Berlin and Kay encoding sequence for language, and support the theory of 11 "basic perceptual color categories." The categories are probably available only through progressive differentiation. The use of color in pictorial representation fits an "active" rather than a "response" model for this expansion. The separation of color use and color terminology has significant cognitive implications.