Sartorial news from ancient Israel

HAARETZ has a couple of recent articles on clothing and its coloring in ancient Israel. First: Pink wool to ponchos: What people in ancient Israel really wore. The man in the dusty street wore a tunic and sandals. The rich could dress so splendidly that they risked being struck down by divine anger (Miriam Feinberg Vamosh).

The wealthy could afford to expand the repertoire of colors in their closet from the earthy tones of the original sheep and goat coats to a rainbow of raiment.

The most costly dye was purple manufactured from the murex snail. But imitation purple for clothing could come from the hyacinth flower, for example. Textiles discovered at Masada included cream, pink and purple, and other colors mentioned in Roman sources include gold, walnut and yellow, all of which came from plants. Scarlet dye came from an insect, the kermes vermilio.

“Costly garments” (Ezekiel 16:10) are mentioned in the Bible – Queen Esther had one (Esther 5:1), and so did Tamar, Amnon’s ill-fated sister (2 Sam. 13:18). The noblewoman mother of the Canaanite general Sisera wore colorful embroidered garments (Judg. 5:30). A wedding dress, according to Psalm 45:13–14, was "embroidered with gold.”

The article is chronologically eclectic, combining information from the Bible, Josephus, the Mishnah, etc., with archaeological evidence from Masada and Qumran. And speaking of that dye from the murex snail ...

Second: Rare find || Fragment containing ancient 'tekhelet' dye discovered near Dead Sea. The precious blue dye, derived from snail glands, was used in ancient times to color the tassels of the four-cornered garment worn by men; this is only the third time such fabric has been found (Judy Maltz).

Announcing the discovery, Dr. Na'ama Sukenik, a curator at the Israel Antiquities Authority, said the tiny piece of fabric had been discovered in the 1950s in a cave at Wadi Murba’at, where Jewish fighters hid during the Bar Kokhba revolt in the second century. As part of her doctoral dissertation at Bar Ilan University, Sukenik recently tested the color found in the fabric and was able to determine that it was derived from the Murex trunchular, a mollusk widely believed to be the marine animal known as the khilazon in the Talmud -- the source of the rare blue dye.

More on the ancient tekhelet dye here and links. Also, lots more on ancient bling (mentioned in the first article) here and links and (sort of) here.