In ancient Egyptian art, what skin color were men typically shown with?

In ancient Egyptian art, men were typically shown with reddish-brown skin.

This convention appears especially in painted tomb scenes and reliefs, where male figures usually have a darker red-brown complexion while women are often painted a lighter yellow or cream. The contrast was an artistic convention, not a literal attempt to record every person’s natural skin tone.

Egyptian art used color symbolically and followed highly regular rules for presenting human figures. Men’s coloring may have suggested outdoor work and exposure to the sun, while women’s lighter coloring reflected the idealized indoor roles assigned to them in many scenes. These conventions varied by period, subject, and context.

The pattern should not be mistaken for a modern racial classification. Egyptian artists also used unusual skin colors for gods, kings, and the dead: Osiris could appear green or black to evoke vegetation, fertility, the Nile soil, and regeneration. Ancient Egyptian color terms themselves covered broad ranges rather than matching modern paint labels exactly.