The Bible described it as the perfect and pure blue, and after almost 2,000 years everyone forgot it

La Biblia menciona 49 veces un azul perfecto, puro, un color tan magnífico y trascendente que era casi imposible de describir.

However, during the last 2,000 years, nobody has known exactly what the "biblical blue" appeared, called Tekhelet in Hebrew, or how it could be recreated.

At the time of the second temple, which rose on Jerusalem until it was destroyed by the Romans, a blue dye of the same name was used to color the fabric used in the clothes of the priests.Jewish men are still ordered to use a ‘tekhelet’ thread in the knotted fringes of their prayer shares, although it might seem not clear for years.

Maimonides, the medieval Sephardic philosopher, described the ‘tekhelet’ as the color of the "clear sky of noon".

Rashi, the Rabbi and French scholar of the eleventh century, said it was "the color of the night sky".

‘Tekhelet’ was “the most precious color that could be obtained,” says Amanda Weiss, director of the Jerusalem Biblical Land Museum.

A possible track of the ingredients that combined to make 'Tekhelet' came from the Talmud, the canonical body of rabbinic texts, in which a man named Abayo asked an old man “this thread of 'Tekhelet', how do you stain it?".They told him that "the blood of the snail and the chemicals" (apparently caustic soda or sodium carbonate) had to boil to create it.

You didn't have to go further.But, the impulse to find such a perfectly blue color could not be easily forgotten.

The modern search to unravel the riddle of ‘Tekhelet’ was promoted by a rabbi, an occupational therapist, two chemicals and a couple of divers, one of them with a doctorate in physics.Together they expected to rediscover the secrets of the lost pigment.

Knowing that Dor Beach's dunes, a popular place on the Mediterranean coast of northern Israel, hid ruins of old tubs and inexplicable lots of discarded snails, the explorers left in the mid -1980s to identify the species of snails thatThey believed they could reveal what the 'tekhelet' was like.

Dor Beach's Murex Trunculus snails seemed promising, but purple ink produced by the secretions of their glands ended up dyeing yellow fabrics.

It touched Otto Elsner, a chemist from the Shenkar Faculty of Engineering and Design, near Tel Aviv, discover that when the ink extracted from the snails was exposed to the sun, it became “deep blue sky”.

Had they found the ‘Tekhelet’ tone?

With a blue similar to that of an impeccable sapphire, ‘tekhelet’ was a dazzling nuance, and they all seemed satisfied that the mythical color had finally reappeared.

The explorers finally established Pile Tekhelet, an organization that produces and promotes the stereAncient Color to History and Rediscovered.

The account, and his search for the missing Cerule.

Now the exhibition at the Bible Lands Museum, "Out of the Blue", explores the mystery of how the attractive color was associated with the nobility and divinity, how it was lost and then found, and even offers visitors to take homeThe kits to create it as Jesus and his followers did a long time ago.

The exhibition includes fabric fragments found in Masada, the strength of the Roman era, along with jewelry made with Afghan lapislázuli, the blue stone appreciated by its intense deep blue threaded with gold.

Masada tissues are dyed with m secretions.Trunculus that were obtained at the rate of a few drops per day, according to the curator of the exhibition, Yehuda Kaplan, who says that thousands of snails are required to color a single garment.

The exhibition logo, which looks like a crown of brilliant sapphires, was inspired by the remains of the pools next to the beach used to harvest and raise snails in what could be the first known example of aquaculture.The museum organizes expeditions to the site.

The exhibition is not only about ‘tekhelet’ and its links with Judaism, but of “the importance of blue throughout the ancient near East”.

From the oldest human history, from Levante to North Africa, blue has been considered a color of luck.It is still common to see the blinds or the painted roofs of bright blue as a protective amulet.A legend says that as the evil eye descends to the earth, a celestial flash disorietes and drives it.

The superstition arrived in Europe and from there to the New World.A compilation of the British customs published in the quarterly newspaper Folk-Lore, in 1898, explains that the "something old" and the "something blue" that uses a girlfriend "are devices to disconcert the evil", without which the evil forces"They would make her sterile".

The exposure of Jerusalem includes artifacts decorated with Egyptian blue, considered the oldest artificial pigment in the world, and LapisLázuli, which when it was not used to decorate jewelry, was crushed to make the overseas, the most desirable and expensive pigment of the Renaissance era.Such was his luxury that the European royal courts adopted color as a representative banner.

King Louis IX of France, the saint of the thirteenth century, usually carried a deeper version, possibly more violet of the real blue of today.

The Jewish prayer chal, called Talit, inspired the blue stripes of the National Flag of Israel.The standard that flew outside the United Nations in May 1949, when Israel was admitted as a member state, closes the exhibition and demonstrates the universal attractiveness of blue, as seen in the vibrant color chosen for the flags of the United Nations and the European Union.

The fashion historian and curator, Yaara Keydar, says that the textile dyed was historically a Jewish occupation, and in the desolate centuries in which the art of the 'tekhelet' was lost, the tinters exchanged indigo, a violet blue coloring based onfloors.

Like the ‘tekhelet’, the indigo was a rare and difficult article to obtain, “and therefore became a very wanted luxury article,” he says.Both pigments, he explains, form "a cult of blue" that endures, even in the classic Karl Lagerfeld and Levi’s garments.

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