Fig 1.
Shells of the three species of murex snails.
left to right: S. haemastoma, H. trunculus and B. brandaris (Photo by Shahar Cohen).
Fig 2.
Wool fibers dyed pink-purple hue (photo by Dafna Gazit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority).
Fig 3.
A wool string made of two strands plied in Z-direction, with a pink-purple edge (photo by Dafna Gazit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority).
Fig 4.
A wool textile fragment decorated with pink-purple weft threads (photo by Dafna Gazit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority).
Table 1.
Radiocarbon date for sample no. 017*.
Fig 5.
A single fiber of sample no. 004 under a polarizing microscope (photo by Naama Sukenik).
Table 2.
Linear gradient elution for HPLC-DAD analysis of the extracted purple dyes.
Fig 6.
HPLC chromatogram of sample 017.
Extracted using DMSO, wavelength 554 nm.
Table 3.
Analytical results, including retention time, spectral wavelengths identification and the relative percentage of the components that were identified at 554 nm.
Fig 7.
Relative proportions of dye components (IND; MBI; DBI; DBIR) at 554 nm in modern fleeces dyed with the three species of sea mollusks (the graph shows the average results of all the modern samples).
Fig 8.
Wool fleeces dyed with different species of sea snails.
1–2: S. haemastoma; 3. B. brandaris; 4–5: H. trunculus (Dyeing—Zohar Amar and Naama Sukenik. Photo by Shahar Cohen).
Fig 9.
Location of “Slaves’ Hill” (Timna Valley) and other iron age sites with evidence of the true purple industry.
(Base map made with Natural Earth, free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com).