Re: Odp: Color Words

��<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META content="text/html; charset=unicode" http-equiv=Content-Type> <META content="MSHTML 5.00.2014.210" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Hello,</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Mark Odegard wrote:</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Here, <I>tyrian</I> is not a color, but an adjective that describes visual qualities, in the class of adjectives occupied by 'speckled', 'striped', 'shiney', 'mottled', 'matt', 'blond', 'fair', 'swarthy', etc. </FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Tyrian is not an adjective describing visual qualities of purple, but simply goes back to the place it then was supposed to have originated, the Canaanite town Tyre on the Levantine coast around which the eldest Levantine traces of purple industries were found (15th-11th centuries). There seems to be proof though that in Crete purple was already produced in the 18th century BCE.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Practically there is no natural dye that wouldn't change hue depending on dyed material and used additives (salts, urine, sun-light, rotting etc.).</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Also there is a word in Mycenaean that has been much discussed for lack of understanding: po-ni-ki-jo 'the phoenician', basis for Classical Greek phoinos (as Pjotr wrote). Mycenologists understood it as meaning 'product of Phoenicia', e.g. Dates (J. Melena in: Po-ni-ki-jo in the Knossos Ga-Tablets. In: Minos 14 /1975 - but dates do not ripen in Crete's climate, so they can in Crete hardly have been payment for people as Melena supposes).</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Others take it to be a (red) coloring for the aromatics that are mentioned on the same tablets (it is measured in weight, so probably wasn't a fluid ...) but as the tablets it occurs on list products of Crete it may have been some other kind of (plant-? earthen?) coloring.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">But still we cannot be sure that the Mycenaeans knew the Phoenicians as such (cf. Melena p.82). Melena also thought that" 'po-ni-ki-ja' in the Knossos chariot tablets is perhaps to be interpreted as 'of palm wood'."(p. 83 n.22) </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Unfortunately the Hittites can't help us very much in this as they wrote the color red (with red wool) with the Sumerograph Sa5 (but I'm not very up-to-date in my knowledge about Hittite, maybe the IE word has been found by now?).</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Pjotr:</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">'Kyanos' was also Homer's word for steel, accompanied e.g. in Ilias 11,24 by the color word 'melanos' (later usually translated as black, but the sea has also this color, meaning dark - if I understand my dictionary correctly its root is the same as the German 'Mal', mark, sign). </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Sandarakos is another name for the red-orange mineral realgar (chemically AsS) that used to be a painters' color in the old times (there is also an ancient remedy sandarakos, but that was made of a north African tree resin and has nothing to do with the color).</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Now tell me, Pjotr, could the Lin. A/B sign 33 that looks like a crocus and has the phonetical value ra(i) be the acronym of a word from the IE 'red'-root *hroudho-/hrudh-ro-? </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">The Aegean or IE name of the flower (that played a large role in Minoan ritual iconography) seems to have been lost, replaced by the now known words 'krokos' and 'saffron' (supposedly going back to Hebrew/Arabian) - well-known plant for dying reddish-yellow, the drug often used as dark red powder (a vessel containing this might be seen on a fresco from Akrotiri in the hands of a young girl with a red colored ear).</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Best wishes from Crete where the first Saffron flowers will be opening up soon.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode"></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Sabine</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV></BODY></HTML>

Re: Odp: Color Words - purple