JERUSALEM, Israel – Israeli archaeologists and scholars have unearthed evidence of an industrial-sized facility south of Haifa for making purple dye. The find at Tel Shiqmona south of Haifa produced the kind of purple dye described in several biblical accounts, including the gospel story of the robes that were put on Jesus before His crucifixion, and the story of Lydia in the book of Acts.
The dye was made from the crushed shells of sea snails, plentiful on the Mediterranean Coast, and the Iron Age “factory” where the dye was produced around 1100 B.C. pre-dates King David and King Solomon.
Four years ago, a very old piece of purple cloth was discovered in southern Israel’s Negev Desert near Timna. Scientists now believe the cloth was dyed in northern Israel at Tel Shiqmona, where blue shells of the murex sea snail can still be seen on the coastline around Haifa.
Archaeologists published their findings last month in the journal PLOS One. The article noted the find at the tel “is the only site in the Near East or around the Mediterranean – indeed, in the entire world – where a sequence of purple-dye workshops has been excavated, and which has clear evidence for large-scale, sustained manufacture of purple dye and dyeing in a specialized facility for half a millennium.”
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Many Bible-reading Christians are familiar with the story of Lydia in Acts 16:14, of the time when the Apostle Paul was preaching in Ephesus: “A woman named Lydia – a seller of purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, a God-fearer – was listening. The Lord opened her heart to respond to what Paul was saying.” (TLV).
In Mark 15:17-18, Roman soldiers taunted Jesus by dressing him in a purple robe, which was expensive and intended for royalty. “They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. And they began to call out to him, ‘Hail, king of the Jews!'” (TLV)
Israeli archaeologist Golan Shalvi from the University of Haifa said, in an interview with New Scientist, that the sea snails secrete a kind of green fluid when crushed which would turn purple when exposed to air.
“However, in order to transform it into an actual dye – one that chemically bonds with textiles – it must be processed into a solution through a complex series of chemical steps,” Salvi explained.
He also stated, “It (Tel Shiqmona) was an industrial site throughout the Iron Age, without monumental architecture or any particular beauty or elegance. I imagine it as a very smelly place – especially to the modern nose – since the production process emitted a terrible odor. I picture wool fleeces dyed in various shades drying outside and inside the building, which may have given the site a purplish-reddish-blue hue.”
The dye, sometimes called “Tyrian purple,” named after the city of Tyre in Phoenicia, was associated with great wealth. A report in The Independent indicated that the dye was more valuable than gold – sometimes as much as 15 times more valuable.
The latest research at Tel Shiqmona has found that production of the dye began much earlier than scientists had thought.
Professor Ayelet Gilboa from the University of Haifa explained, “In the past, the assumption was that the first large-scale production facilities of purple dye were only established in Roman times, around the 1st century C.E.”
She continued, “Tel Shiqmona offers evidence that already in the 9th century B.C.E., purple dye was produced at an industrial scale. It was not just one individual dyeing a garment for a king.”
