3,000-year-old fragments of cloth dyed with Royal Purple found in Israel
3,000-year-old fragments of cloth dyed with Royal Purple found in Israel
The discovery marks the first time purple-dyed Iron Age textiles have been uncovered in the Southern Levant.
Wool fibers dyed with Royal Purple, dating to approximately 1,000 BCE, found in the Timna Valley in southern Israel. Photo by Dafna Gazit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
(January 31, 2021 / JNS) In a groundbreaking discovery, Israeli archaeologists have recovered scraps of fabric dyed in royal purple, also known as true purple, dating back to the era of the biblical King David.
The remnants of woven fabric, a tassel and fibers of wool, were uncovered in a heap of industrial waste at “Slave’s Hill,” an ancient copper-smelting site in the Timna Valley.
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Wool textile fragment decorated by threads dyed with Royal Purple, ~1000 BCE, Timna Valley, Israel. Photo Credit: Dafna Gazit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority
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JERUSALEM, Israel – Israeli researchers announced the groundbreaking discovery of three scraps of biblical purple fabric dating back to the time of King David and King Solomon.
Researchers from Tel Aviv University, Bar Ilan University, and the Israel Antiquities Authority stumbled upon the rare finding while working in the Timna Valley, an ancient copper production center in southern Israel.
Timna Valley: Photo Credit: Erez Ben-Yosef and the Central Timna Valley Project.
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Jan. 28, 2021
Back in the time of King David you couldn’t wear Prada, but there already was a must-have high fashion item: anybody who was somebody had to wear purple.
Analysis of 3,000-year-old textile fragments unearthed in the copper mines of Timna, deep in Israel’s southern desert, has revealed some to have been stained with a precious dye believed to have decorated the clothes of biblical kings and high priests who served in the Temple in Jerusalem. Some of the wool fabrics, found in 2016, at the site were colored with “royal purple,” a team of researchers from Tel Aviv University, the Israel Antiquities Authority and Bar Ilan University reported Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE.