1, 405) but these phrases are not parallel. 4:1, 10), and the 'u purpureus capillus' of Virgil ( Georg. Others say that the word 'purple' is here used like the Latin papuureus, for beautiful, etc., and instance the 'purpurei olores,' 'beautiful swans' of Horace ( Carm. comoe capitis) were tied up in a spiral or pyramidal form on the top. Michaelis thinks that Solomon alludes to their shape when he says (Song 7:5), 'The hair of thine head is like purple,' meaning that the tresses (Sept. Both sorts were supposed to be as many years old as thev had spirals round. The latter is the Murex trunculus of Linnaeus and Lamarck (see Syst. The dye called purple by the ancients, and its various shades, were obtained from many kinds of shell-fish, all of which are, however, ranged by Pliny under two classes: one called 'buccinum,' because shaped like a horn, found, he says, in cliffs and rocks, and yielding a sullen blue dye, which he compares to the color of the angry raging sea in a tempest the other called 'purpura,' or 'pelagia,' the proper purple shell, taken by fishing in the sea, and yielding the deep-red color which he compares to the rich, fresh, and bright color of deep-red purple roses and to coagulated blood, and which was chiefly valued ( ibid. Harduin), and which was supplied with the best wool by the neighboring nomads. 16), yet violet purples and scarlet were nowhere dved so well as at Tyre, whose shores abounded with the best kind of purples (Pliny, Hist. Eze 27:7, 'purple from the isles of Elisha,' supposed to mean Elis, 'and from Syria,' ver. Though purple dyes were by no means confined to the Phoenicians (comp.

The word πορφύρα is, according to Martinius, of Tyrian origin. Their word φοίνιξ, Phoenix, means both Phenician and purple.

The Greeks attributed its first introduction among themselves to the Phoenicians (Eurip. These facts agree, at least, with the accounts which ascribe the invention to the earliest of these two periods, and the pre-eminent trade in it to the Tyrians. It is remarkable that though the Israelites, as early as the first construction of the tabernacle in the wilderness, appear to have had purple stuff in profilsion (Ex 25:1-4), which they had most likely brought with them out of Egypt, yet no instance occurs in the pictorial language of the Egyptians, nor in Wilkinson's Ancient Manners and Customs, of the actual process of dyeing either linen or woollen, although dyes similar to the Tyrian were found among them. But the person to whom the majority ascribe it is the Tyrian Hercules, whose dog, it is said, instigated by hunger, broke a certain kind of shell-fish on the coast of Tyre, and his mouth becoming stained of a beautiful color, his master was induced to try its properties on wool, and gave his first specimens to the king of Tyre, who admired the color so much that he restricted the use of it by law to the royal garments (Pollux, Ononm.

1439, and consequently before the Exodus (Suidas, s.v. 500 others at the time that Minos I reigned in Crete, B.C. Some place it in the reign of Phoenix, second king of Tyre, B.C. Different accounts are given by the ancients respecting the date and origin of this invention. There is, however, no reason to doubt that it was obtained, like the far-famed Tyrian purple, from the juice of certain species of shell-fish. but no reference occurs to the means by which the dye was obtained, except in 1 Macc. In many of these passages the word translated 'purple' means 'purple cloth,' or some other material dyed purple, as wool, thread, etc. (אִרגָּמָן, aryaman, from the Sanscrit raga, red see (esen.

Tincta purpura