How Much Did It Cost to Paint a Pompeii Room Egyptian Blue?
A new study has calculated the staggering cost of painting a room in Pompeii with Egyptian blue pigment. Researchers determined that covering the walls of a recently discovered "Blue Room," a sacred shrine, would have required between 2.7 and 4.9 kilograms of the prized synthetic pigment. Based on prices recorded by Pliny the Elder, this quantity of high-grade pigment would have cost between 50% and 90% of a Roman legionary's annual salary, highlighting it as an extreme luxury.