I Am Sure We Have All Seen An Artists Pallet,

but I am sure not many of us will have seen one as old as this,

a painter's palette inscribed with the name of Amenhotep III, ca. 1390-1352 BCE all photographs The Metropolitan Museum of Art [Public Domain], 

made out of a single piece of ivory, this artist's tool includes six oval paint wells that still contain cakes of blue, green, brown, yellow, red, and black pigments. At one end of the palette is also an inscription of the pharaoh Amenhotep III (ca. 1401-1353 BCE) in hieroglyphics as well as the epithet “beloved of Re.” Amenhotep III's reign was one of the most prosperous periods of ancient Egypt and filled with achievements in art and culture,

the fascinating thing about the pallet is that the colours give historians an insight at how colours were depicted in those times, Jenny Hill writes in Ancient Egypt Online, iwn—color—can also be translated as “disposition,” “character,” “complexion” or “nature.” She delves into the specifics of each of the six basic colours, to see the rest of the article and a description of each colour, have a look here, to visit The Metropolitan Museum of Art, have a look at  these, Website | Facebook | Instagram,  just 6 colours to mix and choose from, a bit different to the boxes of artists  paints I see today, some with almost hundreds of tubes or blocks of paints and pencils, I guess more is not always better.