A Biblical-Era Purple-Dye Factory Explains an Archaeological Mystery

Two of the dyes mentioned frequently by the Bible in conjunction with the priestly vestments and the Tabernacle tapestries—one purple, one azure—are thought by many experts to have been produced from the murex snail. To ancient Romans, “Tyrean purple” (named for the Lebanese city of Tyre) was the color of royalty. Using modern techniques to examine items collected in the excavation of Tel Shikmona, an ancient site on the Israeli coast, archaeologists have determined that they belonged to a workshop for processing the pigments of the murex—making it the first such site ever to be discovered, as Aaron Reich writes:

The site, which is south of Haifa, dates back to the Iron Age (the 11th–6th centuries BCE) and was first excavated in the 1960s. . . . Tel Shikmona, despite being well documented throughout history, often confused scholars as to why it was established. The shore was too rocky to serve as a harbor, and the land around it was not especially suitable for agriculture. The most notable clues up until this point were the abundance of Phoenician pottery, and large amounts of purple coloring preserved in ceramic vats.

Findings of purple coloring from this period are exceptionally rare, the researchers stated, and were found only in small amounts in other places. Not only did Tel Shikmona contain an unprecedentedly large amount—indicating production of the dye—but it also contained looms and spindles indicating manufacturing of textiles as well.

Purple dye, made from the murex snails, was the most expensive in the ancient world. . . . In fact, the exact process of making purple coloring is still not understood by modern scholars.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Ancient Israel, Archaeology, Hebrew Bible

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF