It was not always used in the same manner.

Some painters varnished the whole surface, while others merely glazed the ornaments and accessories, without touching the flesh-tints or the clothing.

This varnish has cracked from the effects of age, or has become so dark as to spoil the work it was intended to preserve.

Doubtless, the Egyptians discovered the bad effects produced by it, as we no longer meet with it after the close of the Twentieth Dynasty.
Egyptian painters laid on broad, flat, uniform washes of colour; they did not paint in our sense of the term; they illuminated.

Just as in drawing they reduced everything to lines, and almost wholly suppressed the internal modelling, so in adding colour they still further simplified their subject by merging all varieties of tone, and all play of light and shadow, in one uniform tint.