On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the black currant plant across from the article title. This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 18 January 2023. This article is about the color.

Queen Victoria after Heinrich von Angeli. Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. Black was one of the first colors used by artists in Neolithic cave paintings. It was used in ancient Egypt and Greece as the color of the underworld. Black is the most common ink color used for printing books, newspapers and documents, as it provides the highest contrast with white paper and thus is the easiest color to read. Similarly, black text on a white screen is the most common format used on computer screens.

Old High German also had two words for black: swartz for dull black and blach for a luminous black. These are parallelled in Middle English by the terms swart for dull black and blaek for luminous black. Swart still survives as the word swarthy, while blaek became the modern English black. Black was one of the first colors used in art. The Lascaux Cave in France contains drawings of bulls and other animals drawn by paleolithic artists between 18,000 and 17,000 years ago.

They began by using charcoal, and later achieved darker pigments by burning bones or grinding a powder of manganese oxide. It was the color of Anubis, the god of the underworld, who took the form of a black jackal, and offered protection against evil to the dead. In Latin, the word for black, ater and to darken, atere, were associated with cruelty, brutality and evil. They were the root of the English words “atrocious” and “atrocity”. Black was also the Roman color of death and mourning.

In the 2nd century BC Roman magistrates began to wear a dark toga, called a toga pulla, to funeral ceremonies. The German and Scandinavian peoples worshipped their own goddess of the night, Nótt, who crossed the sky in a chariot drawn by a black horse. They also feared Hel, the goddess of the kingdom of the dead, whose skin was black on one side and red on the other. They also held sacred the raven. Statue of Anubis, guardian of the underworld, from the tomb of Tutankhamun. In the early Middle Ages, black was commonly associated with darkness and evil.

In Medieval paintings, the devil was usually depicted as having human form, but with wings and black skin or hair. In fashion, black did not have the prestige of red, the color of the nobility. It was worn by Benedictine monks as a sign of humility and penitence. In the 12th century a famous theological dispute broke out between the Cistercian monks, who wore white, and the Benedictines, who wore black. Black symbolized both power and secrecy in the medieval world. The emblem of the Holy Roman Empire of Germany was a black eagle.

The black knight in the poetry of the Middle Ages was an enigmatic figure, hiding his identity, usually wrapped in secrecy. Black ink, invented in China, was traditionally used in the Middle Ages for writing, for the simple reason that black was the darkest color and therefore provided the greatest contrast with white paper or parchment, making it the easiest color to read. It became even more important in the 15th century, with the invention of printing. Black ink was used for printing books, because it provided the greatest contrast with the white paper and was the clearest and easiest color to read.