In this thesis the description and interpretation of pigmented surfaces in the corpus of Archaic Greek literature is examined, in which it is shown that the declaration and conception of colour in antiquity differ from their modern usage, complicating the understanding and interpretation of ancient texts. The descriptions of coloured surfaces, as they have been textually preserved for us, point to the existence of a system, and of certain rules within that system. In this thesis, therefore, the author has attempted to ascertain the rules and contours of the ancient system of colours as may be discerned in Greek literature of the Archaic period. As certain adstratum and substratum languages with which the Greeks were in contact at the time could have had an influence on Greek, these are also here taken into consideration. The author attempts to determine the etymology and lexical development of words used to denote surface pigment and to describe their semantic field and use in texts through contextual definition of meaning, thus contributing to the understanding of the visible world of the Bronze and Iron Age Aegean.