Miscellaneous
Reuters
Israeli researchers announced that they had found purple-dyed fabrics dating back to the era of King David and King Solomon in Tal Al-Manea, on the border with Egypt, in an indication of the wealth of the region’s inhabitants at that time.
The Israel Antiquities Authority and the Tel Aviv and Bar Ilan universities said, “The researchers were surprised to find remnants of woven fabric, tassels and wool fibers dyed in royal purple.”
In a joint statement this week, the three bodies indicated that the discovery was made during an examination of colored textiles taken from Wadi Al-Manea, an area that was once rich in copper production.
The statement pointed out that the “direct dating by radiocarbon dating confirms that the history of the discoveries goes back to about a thousand BC, that is, in the biblical era of the rule of Kings David and Solomon.”
This is the first time that purple-dyed textiles from the Iron Age have been found in Israel or the Levant, according to the statement.
The color purple was associated with kings, nobles and priests, and that the pigment “often cost more than gold,” said Naama Sukenik of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
She added, “Only remnants of mollusk scales and ceramic pieces with stains of dye were found prior to this discovery, which provided evidence of the manufacture of purple in the Iron Age. Now, for the first time, we have direct evidence of the same dyed fabrics, preserved about three thousand years ago.” .
This dye, also called Orjouan Tire, after the coastal city in southern Lebanon, which was known for the production of purple dye in the days of the Phoenicians, still carries a high value today.
“The dye, made from mollusks, is found in the Mediterranean, more than 300 kilometers from Timna, and it is mentioned repeatedly in the Bible and appears in various Jewish and Christian contexts,” the statement said.
Erez Ben Youssef, from the Department of Archeology at Tel Aviv University, said that the discoveries should “revolutionize our perceptions of nomadic societies in the Iron Age,” noting that they “reinforce our assumption that there is an elite in Timna that attests to the existence of a social class structure.”
Source: AFP
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