The most powerfully effective color symbols in art have always been those taken directly from nature and especially from natural phenomena already standing for universal ideas.
Blood and bile, vegetable, fore and the sky, for example have an obvious elemental symbolisms associated with fire and passion, sensation, fertility and spiritually.
In primitive art the most important source of color symbolisms was that of the phases of the moon: white, blood red, and black or blue.
The ancient Hebrews experienced color primarily through nature; color suggested to them elements of the physical world. Blue was the color of the sky, green the color of grass and plants, red the color do blood, white the color of wool and snow.
In ancient Egypt, the use of color on the sarcophagi and papyri doubtless also had a symbolic significance, though no consistent meaning seems to have been attached to a particular color, Th headless goddesses perched on mounds in the concluding scene of the papyrus of Djehutymesyu are black.
In ancient culture the blue, purple and scarlet suggested wealth and royalty. Colored textiles were produced from natural dyes that were rare and expensive.
Color symbolism in ancient culture and society
