James, P. & van der Sluijs, M. A., 2008. “Ziggurats, Colours and Planets – Rawlinson Revisited”, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 60, 93-115 (original) (raw)

Color in Ancient Religion and Ritual

A Cultural History of Color in Antiquity, ed. D. Wharton, 2020

What color are the gods? How does color shape religious experience? Historians of ancient religion have not traditionally paid much attention to these questions; nevertheless, I was compelled to address them when choosing cover designs for a book on divine epiphany (Platt 2011). 1 The image I had chosenof the dramatic arrival of the goddess Selene on a Roman sarcophagus-was predictably monochrome, any traces of pigment having long since vanished from the marble. As so often, antiquity was destined to appear in shades of black and white (Manfrini 2009; Stager 2016: 97-8). When the press's first design arrived on my desktop, however, the cover's accent color was the deep orangey-red so familiar to us from Greek vases. For me, this earthbound tone was not the color of epiphany! After consideration, I requested an ethereal lilac-a shade that evoked the shimmering violet of the rainbow (Bradley 2011: 48-50); the divine porphyreos "purple" that featured in so many sacred garments (Grand-Clément 2011: 116-21; 2016); or the rich drapery that frames the body of Persephone in one of antiquity's most striking scenes of epiphany, from a painted Macedonian tomb (Brecoulaki 2006b; see Figure 4.1). My more allusive approach to imagining ancient color conflicted with one that drew more directly upon antiquity's material relics (in the press's case, vases of Attic clay). Conveying my idea to the designers, moreover, required its reduction to a Pantone number-a branded, standardized system of hues based on specific combinations of pigments designed for modern-day printing (Eiseman and Recker 2011). The challenges I encountered in accessing and reproducing the chromatic qualities of ancient visionary experiences illustrate how difficult it is for 9781474273275_txt_print.indd 63 2/9/2021 8:19:11 AM

Περὶ χρωμάτων (Peri chrōmatōn): Colour formation and investigation method.

Colour Culture and Science Journal Vol. 12 (2), 2020

In this essay, the attention is focused on the method used to investigate colours, as produced in nature. This method was proposed by the author of the treatise Peri chrōmatōn, which has become part of the Corpus Aristotelicum. The colours are first divided into two large categories, simple and mixed, in accordance with other scientific and philosophical approaches. Simple (primary) colours are considered to be white and yellow, and are associated with the elements (air, water, earth, and fire/sun); black is also associated with the elements as they transform into one another. This division is new in comparison with previous theories based on two or four fundamental colours. The endless range of colours seen in objects, plants and animals, is connected to the mechanisms of mixing different qualities and quantities, inherent in what it comes into contact with, and in the consequent changes, in conditions and states of matter, in the incidence of light, qualitatively and quantitatively different. The heuristic reference scheme and the analogical model are represented by the dyeing process. The essentially phenomenological treatise contains historically significant insights: no colour can be seen in its purity; the reciprocal interaction of colours; the variability of conditions that determine the chromatic impression; light as a component of mixtures, and its diversity depending on the source; and the chromatic value of shade. In it, we can also see the formation of a classification of colours and a nomenclature, founded on the relationship of distinct chromatic notations with light and darkness.