Purple

Purple is a color similar in appearance to violet light. In the RYB color model historically used in the arts, purple is a secondary color created by combining red and blue pigments. In the CMYK color model used in modern printing, purple is made by combining magenta pigment with either cyan pigment, black pigment, or both. In the RGB color model used in computer and television screens, purple is created by mixing red and blue light in order to create colors that appear similar to violet light. According to color theory, purple is considered a cool color.

Purple has long been associated with royalty, originally because Tyrian purple dye—made from the secretions of sea snails—was extremely expensive in antiquity. Purple was the color worn by Roman magistrates; it became the imperial color worn by the rulers of the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, and later by Roman Catholic bishops. Similarly in Japan, the color is traditionally associated with the emperor and aristocracy.

According to contemporary surveys in Europe and the United States, purple is the color most often associated with rarity, royalty, luxury, ambition, magic, mystery, piety and spirituality. When combined with pink, it is associated with eroticism, femininity, and seduction.

The modern English word purple comes from the Old English purpul, which derives from Latin purpura, which, in turn, derives from the Greek πορφύρα (porphura), the name of the Tyrian purple dye manufactured in classical antiquity from a mucus secreted by the spiny dye-murex snail. The first recorded use of the word purple dates to the late 900s AD.

Purple first appeared in prehistoric art during the Neolithic era. The artists of Pech Merle cave and other Neolithic sites in France used sticks of manganese and hematite powder to draw and paint animals and the outlines of their own hands on the walls of their caves. These works have been dated to between 16,000 and 25,000 BC.

Purple textiles, dating back to the early second millennium BCE, were found in Syria, making them the oldest known purple textiles in the world. These findings include textiles from a burial site in Chagar Bazar, dating back to the 18th-16th centuries BCE, as well as preserved textile samples discovered in gypsum at the Royal Palace of Qatna.

As early as the 15th century BC, the citizens of Sidon and Tyre, two cities on the coast of Ancient Phoenicia (present day Lebanon), were producing purple dye from a sea snail called the spiny dye-murex. Clothing colored with the Tyrian dye was mentioned in both the Iliad of Homer and the Aeneid of Virgil. The deep, rich purple dye made from this snail became known as Tyrian purple.

The process of making the dye was long, difficult and expensive. Thousands of the tiny snails had to be found, their shells cracked, the snail removed. Mountains of empty shells have been found at the ancient sites of Sidon and Tyre. The snails were left to soak, then a tiny gland was removed and the juice extracted and put in a basin, which was placed in the sunlight. There, a remarkable transformation took place. In the sunlight the juice turned white, then yellow-green, then green, then violet, then a red which turned darker and darker. The process had to be stopped at exactly the right time to obtain the desired color, which could range from a bright crimson to a dark purple, the color of dried blood. Then either wool, linen or silk would be dyed. The exact hue varied between crimson and violet, but it was always rich, bright and lasting.