Friday, 2 October 2026 · Almaty

I made a point of going up to the famous Seated Scribe to photograph his eyes: lined with kohl, with pale blue, seemingly glass pupils that are in fact made of quartz, magnesite and an alloy of copper and arsenic

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I made a point of going up to the famous Seated Scribe to photograph his eyes: lined with kohl, with pale blue, seemingly glass pupils that are in fact made of quartz, magnesite and an alloy of copper and arsenic

The sculpture is believed to have been created between the Fourth (2543-2436 BC) and Fifth (2435-2306 BC) Dynasties, but the name we give the scribe is conventional, merely one of the versions; the owner of the tomb in which the sculpture was found in 1850 has so far not been established.

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