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Michaelis is saying that תכלת is usually understood as a blue/hyacinth color, and that this is well known. But he suggests that the word may originally have referred not to the color itself, but to a sea creature whose ink was used to dye that color.
He points to creatures like sepia, loligo, and related ink-emitting sea animals. These creatures release dark bluish or violet ink into the water, and ancient writers grouped them broadly together. Michaelis thinks ordinary people would not have carefully distinguished between all these species, so Hebrew may have used one broad term for them.
He then connects this to the rabbinic word חלזון, noting that similar words exist in Syriac and Arabic: ܚܶܠܙܘܿܢܳܐ and حَلَزُونٌ, meaning something like a snail or mollusk. He says the lexicographers did not explain this well enough.
Finally, he suggests a possible etymology: perhaps תכלת comes from a root meaning “to pour out,” referring to the creature “pouring out” ink. In other words, תכלת may mean something like “the ink-pourer,” and only later became the name of the blue/purple color produced from it.
Main Text
Arguably the first person to suggest the cuttlefish (Sepia loligo), Yohann David Michaelis, in the 1700s. Long before Lewysohn and even before the Radzyner Rebbe. https://porphyrology.com/view-doctorate/5-the-tekhelet-hillazon/l-identification-of-the-tekhelet-hillazon-as-described-by-maimonides/
Michaelis wrote that the Sepia loligo was the chilazon shel Techeiles, in “Supplementorum Ad Lexica Hebraica, Pars Sexta (part six).”
The transcription below was prepared from a difficult 18th-century scan and checked manually; uncertain readings are noted where relevant.
(p. 2367)
2593. תְּכֵלֶת pisces atramentum effundentes, Sepia, et loligo.
תְּכֵלֶת colorem hyacinthinum significare, et satis notum, et a Braunio de vestitu sacerd. P.I. c. 13 magna eruditionis copia peroratum. Sed et nomen ejus piscis esse, cujus atramento hyacinthina tinguntur, atque ita semel occurrere Ezech. XXVII, 24, vixdum monui. Certe colorem hyacintinum vel coeruleum in nigrum vergentem aliunde ita vocatum esse, vel ipsa nominis forma indicio est, plane non ea quae in nominibus colorum consueta, ex qua esse debuisset תְּכֵל. fem תְּכֵלָה. nec ulla in lingua Orientali praeter Hebraeam coloris significationem habet.
Est autem duplex maxime genus piscium, magnam atramenti vim continens, illamque emittens, ut aliis piscibus nebulam offundat, Sepia, et loligo: utrumque descripsit, atque delineavit, Salvianus de aquatilibus p. 165-172. fig. 59. 60. 61. Adde Needhamii observationes microscopicas, statim ab initio, primamque tabulam aere expressam. Accedit et aliud triplex, succum habens non minus aut nigrum et caeruleum, sed violaceum, cui polypi nomen fecerunt, de quo eundem vide Salvianum p. 160-164. et fig. 58. Has omnes species piscis, colore effuso mare inficientis, uno nomine mollia vocent veteres, putemque Hebraicum aeque late patuisse, vix enim, nisi adcuratus naturae cognitor distinguat, non plebs, nomina condens.
Nomen unde habuerit, incertum, nec periculo vacat, etymologiam investigare: quidsi enim Phoenices (nam Hebraei olim non navigabant) loliginem, quae non nisi in alto mari est, ut sepia litoralis, exotico nomine vocaverint? Rabbini quidem alio eum nomine adpellant, חֶלְזוֹן, quod et habet lingua Syriaca et Arabica, ܚܶܠܙܘܿܢܳܐ (ḥelzōnā) et حَلَزُونٌ (ḥalazūnun). lexicographis non satis adcurate explicantibus. Adblanditur tamen valde verisimile etymon, a כַּלַת, Arab. كَلَتْ (kalatْ ) effundere, ut sit, effusor, nempe ab effusione atramenti, quo persequentibus aut praedae visum praeripit. Verum si attigi, forte non bene vocales positae sunt, melius ita restituendae, תַכְלֵת (nomen ex conjugatione Hiphil ortum, cum Thau praeformativo, sed generis masculini, aut, ut esse solet in piscibus, ambigui, quamquam et puncta-exusari possunt [i.e. puncta excusari], Tsere praecedente Schva mutato in duplex Segol. Vide grammaticam §. 55. n. 11 .
English Translation
2593. תְּכֵלֶת — fish that pour out ink: Sepia and loligo[1].
That תְּכֵלֶת signifies the hyacinthine color is well known, and this has been argued at length, with great learning, by Braunius in De Vestitu Sacerdotali, Part I, chapter 13. But I have scarcely yet pointed out that it is also the name of that fish with whose ink hyacinthine fabrics are dyed, and that it occurs once in this sense in Ezekiel 27:24.
Certainly, the very form of the word indicates that the hyacinthine or blue color, tending toward black, was called this from some other source. It is plainly not formed in the usual way for names of colors; according to that pattern it ought to have been תְּכֵל, feminine תְּכֵלָה. Nor, in any Oriental language besides Hebrew, does it have the meaning of a color.
Now there are chiefly two kinds of fish that contain a great quantity of ink and emit it, so as to cast a cloud before other fish: Sepia and loligo. Salvianus described and illustrated both of them in De Aquatilibus, pp. 165–172, figures 59, 60, and 61. Add also Needham’s Microscopical Observations, right from the beginning, and the first copper-engraved plate.
There is also another threefold kind, having a fluid no less black and blue, but violet, to which they gave the name polypus; on this, see the same Salvianus, pp. 160–164, and figure 58. All these species of fish, which stain the sea by pouring out their color, the ancients called by the single name mollia. And I think the Hebrew term was used just as broadly, since hardly anyone except an exact student of nature would distinguish them — certainly not ordinary people when coining names.
From where the name came is uncertain, and it is not without danger/risk to investigate its etymology. For what if the Phoenicians — since the ancient Hebrews were not sailors — called the loligo, which is found only in the deep sea, unlike the coastal sepia, by a foreign name?
The Rabbis, however, call it by another name, חֶלְזוֹן, which is also found in Syriac and Arabic: ܚܶܠܙܘܿܢܳܐ (ḥelzōnā) and حَلَزُونٌ (ḥalazūnun), though the lexicographers do not explain it accurately enough.
Still, a very plausible etymology suggests itself from כַּלַת, Arabic كَلَتْ (kalat), “to pour out,” so that it would mean “the pourer-out,” namely from its pouring out of ink, by which it deprives either its pursuers or its prey of sight.
But if I have hit upon the matter correctly, perhaps the vowels have not been placed properly. They should rather be restored this way: תַכְלֵת — a noun formed from the Hiphil conjugation, with prefixed Thau, but of masculine gender, or, as often happens with fish, of common/ambiguous gender. Although the points can also be defended — puncta-exusari [i.e. puncta excusari] — with the Tsere before a Schva changed into a double Segol. See the grammar, §55, no. 11.
English Footnotes
1. R’ Yitzchak Herzog understood Michaelis’s practical identification as Sepia loligo, i.e. the squid/loligo rather than sepia broadly.
