Dyeing

Wool and flax were the most commonly used materials for making cloth. The natural colour of flax, from which linen was made, was greyish white. Linen was not generally dyed, but bleached to give it a brighter whiteness.
Wool can have various natural colours, varying from white to dark brown and black. If people wanted materials to have a different colour, the wool could be dyed. There are also indications that in Mesopotamia materials were dyed already in the third millennium.

In antiquity, dyes could be made from plants, animals and minerals. The recipe for the dye was often a family secret, passed down from generation to generation. Well-known plant dyes were made, for instance, out of woad (blue), madder (red) or saffron (yellow). Red was also made from the tiny bodies of the female coccus insect. For the colour purple, among other things, the slime from the purple slug (murex) was used. This was very costly: experiments have shown that 12 000 slugs were needed to make 1,5 grams of pure purple dye.

In Jerusalem, the dyers had their workshops close together in a single district. The location of a dyer’s shop had to meet certain conditions. For instance, there had to be sufficient water close by. Dyes were produced outside of Jerusalem too. Tyre and Sidon in Phoenicia were renowned for their trade in purple dye. In Acts16:14 we read of Lydia of Thyatira, who was a merchant trading in purple materials.