An incredibly colorful picture emerges from the Ancient Near East that reveals how the dyer and weaver succeeded in creating variegated shades of purple – from bluish to reddish. For the rich, powerful, and priestly, the most eminent purples were produced from Muricidae sea snails. The main molluskan species used for such colors was Hexaplex trunculus, with some of these species producing reddish-purple pigments and such colored woolen dyeings, while another variety of the same species produced bluish-purple pigments and dyeings. The use of the other purple-producing Mediterranean mollusks was probably as "color additives" to the H. trunculus species in order to produce even redder purple dyeings. For the more common folk who desired purple embellishments on their garments, the most common method of producing such purple colors – the “popular people’s purple” – was by combining different dyes. A cornucopia of purple shades were produced from the well-known red-madder and blue-indigo double-dyeing method. However, other surprising chemical and physical combinations have also been observed. Why some combinations were performed to produce the final color is still confounding, and the finding of certain blends is startling. Entomological sources (Ararat cochineal and Kermes insects) were also combined with flora dyestuffs and, strangely enough, even with some molluskan species. These ancient artifacts, with a plethora of purples, span several millennia, and were excavated in various geographical regions that include today’s Egypt, Israel, Iran, and Russia. These colorful items, discovered by the presenter via chromatographic (HPLC) and spectrometric (UV/Vis) analyses, will be discussed in the talk.

Archaeological shades of purple from flora and fauna

2019 Spring National Meeting

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