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| Israel Antiquities Authority |
“And now I have sent a cunning man, endued with understanding, of Hiram my father’s, the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre, skillful to work in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple, in blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson....”
2 Chronicles 2:13-14
A certain piece of cloth that is significant to Freemasons made the news last week. No, not some talk show host’s Prince Hall sweater. This is a scrap of fabric said to date to the Iron Age epoch the Hebrew Bible informs us was the time of David and Solomon.
Even without particular literacy in the Hebrew Bible, Freemasons will recognize the above verses from their ceremonies. Mention of a skilled workman, able to craft metal, stone, and wood is straightforward, but kudos to the Masons who wonder about the placement of colors on that resume, and extra credit to those who investigated it.
We today take our colors for granted. In paints and inks, and in dyes and food colorings, purple is made to appear all around us. In ancient times, however, things were extremely complicated.
Tyre, home of King Hiram, was famous in antiquity for several reasons, including its manufacture of purple and blue dyes. To produce a single ounce of the colorful substance, fishermen would draw from the Mediterranean thousands of a certain kind of snail. The mollusk contained a gland that secreted a substance that was found to have the potential for creating purple, red, and blue dyes. The process was extremely labor intensive and its chemistry required the use of urine. Between the gutted snails and the urine, sailors knew they were approaching Tyre just by the smell. I bet the guy who discovered that process had some funny stories. Anyway, the expense and scarcity of the coloring mandated its use be reserved for royal and priestly leadership.
Might this piece of fabric have been part of a garment worn by Solomon, King of Israel?
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