during the reign of Tutmosis III, the copper ore is replaced by the use of bronze filings. This has been established by the detection of a specific amount of tin oxide in Egyptian blue, which only could have resulted from the use of tin bronze scraps as the source of copper, which coincides with the time when bronze became widely available in ancient Egypt. Occurrences outside of Egypt Egyptian blue was found in Western Asia during the middle of third millennium BC in the form of small artifacts and inlays, but not as a pigment. It was found in the Mediterranean area at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, and traces of tin were found in its composition suggesting the use of bronze scrap instead of copper ore as the source of copper. During the Roman period, use of Egyptian blue was extensive, as a pot containing the unused pigment, found in 1814 in Pompeii, illustrates. It was also found as unused pigment in the tombs of a number of painters. Etruscans also used it in their wall paintings. The related Chinese blue has been suggested as having Egyptian roots. Later, Raphael used Egyptian blue in his Triumph of Galatea. Roman production of Egyptian blue Around the turn of the eras, Roman sources report that a certain Vestorius transferred the production technology from Alexandria to Pozzuoli near Naples (Campania, Southern Italy). In fact, archaeological evidences confirm production sites in the northern Phlegraean Fields and seem to indicate a monopoly in the manufacture and trade of pigment spheres. Due to its almost exclusive use, Egyptian blue is the blue pigment par excellence of Roman antiquity; its art technological traces vanish in the course of the Middle Ages. In 2021, Early Medieval Egyptian blue (fifth/sixth century AD) was identified on a monochrome blue mural fragment from the church of St. Peter above Gratsch (South Tyrol, Northern Italy). By a new analytical approach based on Raman microspectroscopy, 28 different minerals with contents from the percent range down to 0.1 permille were identified. Inclusion of knowledge from neighbouring disciplines made possible to read out the information about the type and provenance of the raw materials, synthesis and application of the pigment and ageing of the paint layer preserved in the previously not accessible trace components, and thus to reconstruct the individual "biography" of the Egyptian blue from St. Peter. This paradigm shift in