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A fragment of purple fabric excavated from the Timna Valley, an ancient copper production district, in southern Israel. /CFP
Israeli researchers said they had found scraps of fabric colored with a purple dye dating from the eras of King David and King Solomon in the south of the country.
"The researchers were surprised to find remnants of woven fabric, a tassel and fibers of wool dyed with royal purple," the Israel Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv University and Bar Ilan University said.
The discovery happened while they were examining colored textiles from Timna Valley, an ancient copper production district, they said in a joint statement this week.
"Direct radiocarbon dating confirms that the finds date from approximately 1000 BCE, corresponding to the biblical monarchies of David and Solomon in Jerusalem," they said.
Scraps of fabric colored with a royal purple dye dating from the time of King David and King Solomon found from the Timna Valley, an ancient copper production district, in southern Israel. /CFP
It was the first time purple-dyed Iron Age textiles had been found in Israel or the Levant, they added.
The color was associated with royalty, nobility and priests and the dye "often cost more than gold," said Naama Sukenik, curator of organic finds at the Israel Antiquities Authority.
"Until the current discovery, we had only encountered mollusk-shell waste and potsherds with patches of dye, which provided evidence of the purple industry in the Iron Age," she said.
"Now, for the first time, we have direct evidence of the dyed fabrics themselves, preserved for some 3,000 years."
Also called Tyrian purple, after the city in southern Lebanon known for its production, the pigment is still highly valued.
"The dye, which is produced from species of mollusk found in the Mediterranean, over 300 kilometers from Timna, is often mentioned in the Bible and appears in various Jewish and Christian contexts," the statement said.
Erez Ben-Yosef from Tel Aviv University's Archaeology Department said the finds should "revolutionize our concepts of nomadic societies in the Iron Age."
He identified the Timna site as part of "the biblical Kingdom of Edom, which bordered the kingdom of Israel to the south."
The site's state of preservation was "exceptional and it is paralleled only by that at much later sites such as Masada and the Judean Desert Caves," he said.
"The new finds reinforce our assumption that there was an elite at Timna, attesting to a stratified society," he said.
Source(s): AFP
