Art & MusicGreek → English
Porphyry
/ˈpɔːrfəri/noun
An igneous rock with large crystals set in a fine groundmass, especially the deep red-purple stone quarried in Egypt.
The Greek roots
πορφύρα
porphúra
purple dye, murex shellfish
Literally: “the purple stone”
Follow a root:πορφύρα2 words
The story of the word
The purple in the name is the shellfish dye reserved for emperors. Imperial porphyry came from one place on earth, Mons Porphyrites in Egypt's Eastern Desert, worked from the first century AD, and Rome hauled it out for columns, basins and sarcophagi. Byzantine empresses gave birth in a chamber lined with it, so an heir born to a reigning emperor was πορφυρογέννητος, born in the purple. The Four Tetrarchs on the corner of St Mark's in Venice are carved from it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → Middle English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
purpleporphyriaporphyrin
In a sentence
Napoleon's sarcophagus is often called porphyry, though the stone is actually a Russian quartzite.