Purple was especially revered in the Byzantine Empire. In the Roman Catholic Church, “promotion to the purple” is promotion to the rank of cardinal. And while purple is flashy and pretty, it was more important at the time that purple was expensive. In ancient Rome, purple was the color of royalty, a designator of status. The Persian king Cyrus adopted a purple tunic as his royal uniform, and some Roman emperors forbid their citizens from wearing purple clothing under penalty of death. The color purple’s ties to kings and queens date back to ancient world, where it was prized for its bold hues and often reserved for the upper crust. Jesus Christ, in the hours leading up to his crucifixion, was dressed in purple by the Roman garrison to mock his claim to be ‘King of the Jews’. Purple was mentioned in the Old Testament – in the Book of Exodus, God instructs Moses to have the Israelites bring him an offering including cloth “of blue, and purple, and scarlet,” to be used in the curtains of the Tabernacle and the garments of priests. The exact hue varied between crimson and violet, but it was always rich, bright and lasting. Then either wool, linen or silk would be dyed. The process had to be stopped at exactly the right time to obtain the desired color, which could range from a bright crimson to a dark purple, the color of dried blood. In the sunlight the juice turned white, then yellow-green, then green, then violet, then a red which turned darker and darker. There, a remarkable transformation took place. The snails were left to soak, then a tiny gland was removed and the juice extracted and put in a basin, which was placed in the sunlight. Mountains of empty shells have been found at the ancient sites of Sidon and Tyre. Thousands of the tiny snails had to be found, their shells cracked, the snail removed. The Phoenicians’ “Tyrian purple” came from a species of sea snail now known as Bolinus brandaris, and it was so exceedingly rare that it became worth its weight in gold. The deep, rich purple dye made from this snail became known as Tyrian purple. Clothing colored with the Tyrian dye was mentioned in both the Iliad of Homer and the Aeneid of Virgil. These works have been dated to between 16,000 and 25,000 BC.Īs early as the 15th century BC the citizens of Sidon and Tyre, two cities on the coast of Ancient Phoenicia, (present day Lebanon), were producing purple dye. The artists of Pech Merle cave and other Neolithic sites in France used sticks of manganese and hematite powder to draw and paint animals and the outlines of their own hands on the walls of their caves. Purple first appeared in prehistoric art during the Neolithic era. Purple also represents meanings of wealth, creativity, wisdom, dignity, grandeur, devotion, peace, pride, mystery, independence, and magic. The color purple is often associated with royalty, nobility and luxury. Purple combines the calm stability of blue and the fierce energy of red. It is simply a combination, in various proportions, of two primary colors, red and blue. It exists in culture and art, but not, in the same way that For this reason, it is called a non-spectral color. It was not one of the colors of the rainbow identified by Isaac Newton, and it does not have its own wavelength of light. Purple, unlike violet, is not one of the colors of the visible spectrum. The first recorded use of the word purple dates to the late 900s AD. The modern English word “purple” comes from the Old English purpul, which derives from Latin purpura, which, in turn, derives from the Greek πορφύρα (porphura), the name of the Tyrian purple dye manufactured in classical antiquity from a mucus secreted by the spiny dye-murex snail. Purple refers to any of a variety of colors with hue between red and blue.
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