Clay Cartouche Creations

For our Ancient Egyptian unit ("Ancient Egypt: Secrets in the Sand") at our microschool, we created simple cartouches for the students to take home.

An Egyptian cartouche is an oval or oblong shape that encloses a royal name written in hieroglyphics. Used in ancient Egypt (pre-400), cartouches signified that the name inside belonged to a pharaoh or a person of great importance, offering protection and emphasizing their power and status.

Air dry clay (we used DAS terracotta, but any would work)

Clay tools (optional)

Hieroglyphics stamp set (ours came with a book called Fun with Hieroglyphics on Amazon)

Parchment paper

Gold paint

Black paint (optional)

Mini rolling pin (optional)

The students each got a piece of air dry clay about the size of ping pong ball. They rolled out the clay and shaped it into an oval about the size of a 3x5 index card.

The clay needed to be about 1/4 inch thick in order for the stamps to leave decent impressions.

Students were given the option to either begin stamping their names in hieroglyphics or create the outer rope and knot loop. We used water to wet our fingers to help keep the clay from hardening. Each student used the book to determine the symbols that would be used in the spelling of their names. Some students used sounds while others used the symbols for each letter.

We placed ours on a shelf in a back room to keep students from touching them while they dried. They remained on the shelf for roughly 2 days.

Most students used metallic gold paint directly on top of the clay. It dried relatively quickly and took about 2 to 3 coats of paint to fully cover and dry shiny. Some of the students painted a black coat under the gold to create an "antiqued" gold effect.