Historical Data Kermes with an alum mordant dyes wool and silk a bright red. On wool, this red has a light yellow tinge and thus approaches the warm colour of the madder red. In the antique period, kermes dyeing was of great importance in the Near East and Southern Europe . The origins probably go back to the Sumerians, that is, to the 3rd millennium BC. The most important red dye known to the ancient Mesopotamians was kermes (from the Ar. girmis). It has already been surmised that kermes was obtained from the oak on the basis of philological evidence. In a lexical text, "red worm" is equated with "red drug of the thicket". Another substance, a "drug for dyeing" mentioned in a text with oak-manna, may well refer to kermes. A text from Nuzi seems to complete the evidence for the use of kermes and reads as follows: "One woman of the palace for five talents of copper, Ili-ittiya, the merchant took.
And on the arrival of his caravan, for the five talents of copper (the equivalent) in cedar, cypress, tamarisk, (and) myrtle wood, in x and x, in blue and red-purple wool, and in rouge extracted from worms Ili-ittiya shall produce and in the palace to Taya deliver. Seal of Ili-ittiya, the merchant". It may be noted that the source of cedar wood was Syria . The contract stipulates that the merchant pay the purchase price of the woman slave when the caravan returns. This document is interesting for another reason in that it uses the word for Canaan in the sense of red-purple adding evidence that the word for Phoenician came originally from the Greek word for "blood-red" (phoinix). In other words, the ethnicon is traced to the name for the dye and not vice versa as is ordinarily believed.The Phoenicians were masters at scarlet dyeing. Scarlet is a bluish red. Kermes lost its important position in the dyeing industry soon after the Spaniards entered the market with a similar but superior product, the cochineal insect from the New World . The mysterious new product was thought for a long time to be of botanical origin, dried fruit or seed, which is not surprising to those who have looked at the material without the aid of a magnifying glass. The Spaniards were secretive about it and not willing to disclose its origin. The discovery of magnificent colour, scarlet, is attributed to the Mezopotamias in ancient times. The Sumerians were skilled in making woollen cloth. They were meticulous people, who described in detail the techniques of cloth making etc. on terracotta tablets.The splendid scarlet cape found by the conquering Hebrews in city of Ai in 1400 B.C. (Joshua VII, 21) was, according to Brunello, dyed with kermes. This cape was made apparently in Sinear. The Persians, with a taste for the arts and loving splendour, not only absorbed some of the Mesopotamian civilisation, but developed it further to suit their own tastes. Their speciality was the use of scarlet for dyeing their garments and their beautifully coloured carpets. The word scarlet apparently originates from the Persian sakirlat (red colour), adopted by the Romans as scarlatum . The source of the scarlet dye is an insect known as kermes. The name most likely originated in the Sanscrit kermi (=worm), rendered in Arabic as quirmiz , and in Persian as kermes. The name crimson in English has the same ancient root.The kermes insect (Kermes vermilio Planchon) belongs to the family of Cocciddea. This insect and its related species live on oak trees Quercus coccifera, Q. ilex and Q. robur . The female, which actually supplies the red dye, has a global shape when fully developed. The mature female is about 7 mm long and 6 mm broad, and is packed with up to 3000 eggs. To the layman it has no resemblance to familiar insects, as its legs and antennae are not visible to the naked eye. It firmly adheres to the twigs of the oak tree on which it has developed. Only the fully developed females are collected, and these are dried carefully. The insect shrivels, loses a lot of weight, and finally resembles some dried seed; this is probably why the Romans called it grana (seeds).The kermes insect has only one generation in a year, and the yield of dye is therefore limited; apart from this, the collection from the oak trees is an exacting job. Each insect has to be carefully dislodged from the twig by the fingernail, without damaging it. One person can collect about 1 kg of kermes in a day, and this will lose about 2/3 of its weight during the drying process. The use of the kermes was not restricted to the dyers alone, for in ancient times the extract was used as a medicine. It was applied as an astringent to wounds and as a cure for congestion of the eyes. The famous Arab physician Abu ben-Masouiach (died 857), praised kermes as a medicine to stimulate the heart, and it was used in Europe until the 18th century as a cardiac drug. F.Silvestri, the great Italian entomologist, confirms that the most prescribed medicine during the 8th and 9th centuries was Alkermes (extract of kermes) and he commented that the colour and the aroma of the liqueur must have contributed to its effectiveness.The kermes insect was not actually bred by man in the same sense as were silkworms, bees, or the cochineal insect. Growing as it does on the many-branched oak trees, both the artificial infestation and the harvesting of the insect would be a very laborious and time-consuming job. However, special oak trees were planted, or even imported to new countries (e.g. Assyria ), to supply a suitable host plant, and these were then infested with kermes. During mediaeval times Venice had the reputation of producing the most superb colours in their dyeing industry. The colour for which they were most admired was the Venetian Scarlet made of kermes, which they called vermeio (vermilium= little worm). The Venetians not only carefully controlled their production techniques, but also strictly protected the quality. In the statutes of the dyers of city of Lucca in 1255, amongst other regulations it was forbidden to use the cheaper madder as a substitute for kermes.The punishment for contravening this regulation was a fine of one hundred lira, or the right hand cut off. Wherever kermes was produced for export during the Middle Ages, most of it finally landed in Venice or in Marseilles , to be used there or distributed to other European customers. Later, when production had increased and the price of the kermes was reduced, scarlet became more generally available, even for military uniforms. The Red Coats of the British Infantry, and the breeches of the Hungarian Hussars, were said to have been dyed with scarlet; so were the Fez the well-known red headpieces of the Turks and the skull caps of the Greeks .This industry originated apparently in the ancient city of Fez ( Morocco ), but later Tunisia became the centre of fez fabrication, using kermes from Algeria and Oran . D2.2.2_fichiers/image137.jpg Photo: R. Karadag The Greeks and Romans greatly treasured kermes. We found kermes dyes in Roman textiles from Palmyra . The Spaniards paid half their tribute to Rome with kermes. Kermes was sprinkled with vinegar, dried in the sun and sold as ?grain? (grana) or, alternatively, dipped in a vinegar bath (some authorities refer to fumes of vinegar) and made into cakes. In the Middle Ages, the vermiculi were often packed in leather containers, without first being dried or at least sufficiently dried.As early as the 9th century, the dye itself was prepared by boiling kermes in a solution of urine. That the use of kermes is much older than even the earliest written records testify is suggested by a scrap of evidence from a grotto site, described as neolithic, in Bouches-du-Rhone , Provence . Here traces of a paté of toasted barley, meat and K. vermilis were found; impurities included red textile fibres. Naturally, no certain explanation can be offered, but it is possible that the paté had medicinal or ceremonial significance and that the fibres had been purposefully dyed. Scarlet or 'crimson' is mentioned several times in the Old Testament (from the period of the Exodus) and in the Talmud (4th to 6th century AD) It is generally agreed that the word employed, t?la, t?la ath, t?la at sh?n?, or karm?l, refers to kermes-dye or material dyed with kermes ". The Vulgate (AD 385-405) translates vermiculus .There is however, no direct evidence that the ancient Hebrews prepared or even employed the dye themselves, but rather obtained scarlet thread or cloth, to which considerable ceremonial significance was attached, from Phoenician or Egyptian sources. The "rouge extracted from worms" carried by a Phoenician merchant into northern Iraq in the middle of the 2nd millennium B. C. is the earliest reference to kermes . The Egyptians knew the dye before 1000 B. C. However they cannot have produced it themselves and presumably depended on Phoenician and later traders. In the workshops of the Nile valley, kermes may always have been reserved for leather, woollen carpets and silk. The Jewish community in Cairo in the 13th century included dyers specialising in crimson (qirmiz?n?), notably for silk.but whether the agent was kermes or Polish cochineal (shipped from Venice ) cannot be determined. Kermes was probably first traded into Syria and later produced locally.Tiglath-pileser (1100 BC) introduced several trees, including apparently the kermes oak. In Arabic the word ball?t is used to describe oaks in general or more particularly the deciduous oaks, sindian the evergreen oaks, notably Q. cocccifera. In any event, by AD 100 kermes was harvested around the Mediterranean margins of Asia Minor, as well as in southern Greece , parts of Iberia and North Africa, and in Sardinia . A brief but reasonably accurate description of kermes may be found in the Etymologiarum (AD 600) of Isidore, archbishop of Seville : kókkos Graeci, nos rubrum seu vermiculum icimus; est enim vermiculus ex silvestribus frondibus . This is the earliest post-classical reference. A collection of recipes for dyeing, of the 9th century or earlier and of Italian origin, includes compositio vermiculi , almost certainly kermes .Since 1464, the famous purple of the robes of Roman Catholic cardinals is no longer the Tyrian purple of the purple snail but rather an intensive kermes red, a change that occurred with the demise of purple dyeing in Constantinople after the Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, which led the pope to order the establishment of kermes dyeing. Other interesting facts about the cultural history of kermes, as well as literary references, can be found in Schweppe. Kermes dyeing was supplanted to a great extent by cochineal dyeing centuries ago. Cochineal from the New World is a far more effective dye than any of the Old World dye-insects. Occasionally today in Tunis in Tunisia , however, wool felt fezzes will be dyed upon special request with kermes.