Rare 4,000-year-old artifact mentioned in the Bible 25 times is discovered in Israel’s ‘Cave of Skulls’

Archaeologists have discovered a rare artifact that appears throughout the Old Testament of the Bible.

In a cave in Israel, they discovered a 3,800-year-old piece of textile dyed with “scarlet worm,” a dye mentioned 25 times in Scripture.

The red dye was made from the carcasses and eggs of an insect. People ground these into a powder to dye clothes.

The textile consisted of red-dyed wool threads woven through undyed linen threads, creating a grid-like design.

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced the findings on Thursday, after the textile, measuring less than two centimeters in size, was found in the “Cave of Skulls” in the Judean Desert.

The ‘scarlet worm’ mentioned in the Bible is a scale insect that lives in oak trees. The most important species in ancient times was the kermes caterpillar.

The females and their eggs produce carminic acid, which gives the dye its red color.

People collected the insects, sprinkled them with vinegar, dried the carcasses, and ground the remains into a powder that was used to dye fabrics and clothing.

The red hue, which ranges from orange to pink and crimson, has significant historical symbolism and meaning, the team reports in the study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Archaeological Science.

‘The red colour of scale insects, which are based on molecules such as kermesic acid or carminic acid, is both stable and attractive, making them much more prestigious than vegetable dyes.’

The scarlet dye is known in Hebrew as shani or tola’at shani (meaning crimson worm) and is used extensively in the Old Testament, alone or in combination with other precious dyes, including the blue and purple dyes of sea snails.

Leviticus 14:16 says, “And he shall take the living bird, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water.”

The deep red color is also mentioned several times in Exodus, most notably in chapter 26, verse 1: “You shall make for the tabernacle ten curtains of finely twisted linen, and blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, weaving cherubim with skill.”

The use of ‘Kermes’ is also mentioned in the Stockholm Papyrus, which contains 154 recipes for dyeing, colouring gemstones, cleaning pearls and imitation gold and silver.

The manuscript dates from between 200 and 100 BC

The red dye from kermes is also mentioned in ancient trade documents, for example on cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia, dating back to 1425 BC.

The team discovered the ancient textile in Israel. They discovered a plant material from the southern Levant that was used to make the fibers and the weft threads were made of wool.

“This textile is a weft weave, with approximately 50 threads per cm in the weft system and 10 threads per cm in the warp,” the study said.

The weft threads are tightly arranged, while the warp threads are further apart.

The weft threads were a bridal red colour and were woven between undyed warp threads.

Researchers determined the dyes using the high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analytical method. This method separates compounds dissolved in a liquid sample to identify the components in the mixture.

They then compared the findings to a database of standards of known chemical components, which showed that the insects secrete kermesic acid.

Using carbon-14 analysis, the textiles were dated to the Middle Bronze Age (1767–1954 BC).

Dr Naama Sukenik from the IAA said: ‘This advanced analytical method allowed us to pinpoint the origin of the dye, down to the exact species of scale insect.

‘We can therefore conclude with great probability that textiles in antiquity were dyed with a species of Kermesvermilio, which produces kermesic acid, which gives it the characteristic red colour.’

Professor Zohar Amar of Bar-Ilan University said: ‘The term ‘worm’ was a general term in ancient times for various insects and their stages of development.

The biblical association of this color with a living creature testifies to impressive zoological knowledge. Female scale insects do not have legs or wings. Some Greek and Roman naturalists even took them for plant grains.

‘Throughout history, various species of scale insects have been used to produce red dye.

‘In South America, another species of scale insect is still used for dyeing textiles. This species lives on certain types of cacti.

Despite the wealth of written historical evidence of the widespread use of scale insect dyeing in antiquity, few scale insect dyed textiles have been found worldwide that predate Roman times.

“This important find bridges the gap between written sources and archaeological discoveries and provides evidence that the ancient textile dyeing industry was already sufficiently developed for animal dyeing at this stage,” said Dr. Sukenik.

‘The rare textiles are evidence of the broad, international trade networks that were already functioning at the time and indicate that an elite society existed.’