The Leyden and Stockholm Papyri - University of Cincinnati

However, after you have dipped the wool in several times, lift it
out. Add to the pomegranate blossom water about a ball of alumed
archil and dye the wool by judging with the eye. If you wish, however,
that the purple be dark, add a little chalcanthum and let the
wool remain long in it. In another passage it is in the following
way: But if you wish that the purple be dark, then sprinkle natron
and a little chalcanthum in the dye bath.
96. Dyeing in Purple
Purple. Roast and boil Phrygian stone. Leave the wool therein
until it becomes cold. Then lift it out, put 1 mina (each) of archil
and amaranth in another vessel, boil then and lei the wool cool
down in it.
Phrygian stone was evidently some kind of a mineral capable of
yielding soluble salts. It may have been a type of alunite according
to Berthelot. This would explain its use in mordanting.
97. Another (Recipe)
Take the wool and clean with soap weed. Take blood stone and put
it in a kettle. Put therein previously boiled chalcanthum. Put in the
wool previously mordanted in urine, alum, and misy. Lift the wool
out, rinse it with salt water, let it become cold, and brighten the
purple with gall-nut and hyacinthe. It has a very beautiful foreign
appearance.
“Bloodstone” is identical with our hematite while “misy” was either
iron or copper pyrites or oxidation products of these (see
Pliny, Natural History, Book XXXIV, 31). “Hyacinthe” was some
kind of a vegetable dyeing material.
98. Another (Recipe)
THE STOCKHOLM PAPYRUS
Take and boil grain weevils, dross of iron and laurel berries. Put in
2 minas of wool, which you have previously mordanted, and now
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