22 Rev. Isaac Herzog on 



hrandaris ; and the chain of inquiries has been practically 

 continuous down to the present day. To William Cole, an 

 Englishman, belongs the credit of having for the first time after 

 the total extinction of purple-dyeing, re-discovered (1681) the 

 remarkable properties of susceptibility to light, and of colour- 

 progression under its action, possessed by the fluids secreted by 

 certain molluscs. W. R. Wilde, an Irishman, made a substantial 

 contribution towards the solution of our problem by his discovery 

 of huge deposits of shells of Murex truncidus on the shore of 

 ancient Tyre, the home of purple-dyeing. Special mention must 

 also be made of the striking researches of Lacaze-Duthiers. His 

 " Memoire sur la Pourpre " (1857), narrates his experiments on 

 the secretions of Murex trunculus, M. hrandaris, M. erinaceus, 

 Purpura hcBmastoma and P. lapillus, and sheds a flood of light 

 on the statements contained in Aristotle and Pliny. 



The net result of the study of the classical texts, combined 

 with archaeological discoveries and scientific experiments, has 

 been the establishing, beyond a shadow of doubt, that at least 

 the following species were anciently employed in the manufacture 

 of purple : — Murex hrandaris, M. trunculus, and Purjyura 

 hoemastoma. 



Purple in the Bible and in Talmudic literature is mentioned 

 under two designations, tekelet and argaman. While argaman 

 is generally explained as red or violet-red purple, there is less 

 consensus among translators with regard to tekelet, but the 

 prevailing view is that, contrary to the traditional interpretation, 

 it denotes not a dark pure blue, but rather a dark violet, 

 inclining to blue. In my work on Tekelet, however, I have 

 shown, I believe conclusively, that if not actually so in the 

 strictly scientific sense, the tekelet-colour did not, at all events, 

 appreciahlg differ from a dark pure blue, the nuance assigned to 

 it by tradition. It is generally assumed that both tekelet and 

 argaman are varieties of purple, or in other woi'ds, of stuff dyed 

 with sea-snail pigment. That argaman was of this nature is 

 attested by the Septuagint, the oldest translation of the Bible. 



