Historical Snapshot: Exploring Phoenicia’s Royal Purple Dye
Growing up in Lebanon, many have heard of Phoenicia’s magnificent purple dyes, the envy of all the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean. But alongside grandfatherly anecdotes and brief mentions in history class, lies a rich history surrounding this dye’s local production and distribution.
Production of Phoencia’s purple dye is said to have begun as early as 1570 BC, although some accounts put the date closer to 1200 BC. After initially being the exclusive domain of Tyre and its neighbors, the dye’s production eventually spread to the Roman Empire, with production finally ceasing with the decline and fall of the Byzantine (Western Roman) Empire.
Early Phoenciains were tight-lipped about the dye’s production process but we have come to know that the purple color was produced through the secretion of the Mediterranean predatory sea snail species such as Bolinus brandaris, Hexaplex trunculus, and Stramonita haemastoma.
These snails would secrete the purple dye in several instances:
– to sedate prey – to protect their eggs from bacteria – when attacked by predators – when poked by humans
The harvesting and subsequent production of this dye was a complicated biological process. Dye makers could choose to poke the snails so that they would secrete the purple color, a long and labor-intensive process that would ensure the snails would remain as renewable source, or just crush the accumulated snails together, a fast but one time production process.
Some accounts record that ancient Tyrians would gather a large amount of snails and leave them to decompose in vats around the city, a process that would produce a horrible odor. No modern day reconstruction has been capable of accurately replicating the Phoenician process.
The dye was favored and adopted by noble courts around the ancient world due to its perceived high quality. The Byzantine (Western Roman) Empire considered purple to be its imperial color, highly regulating its production and limiting it to the imperial court. This process was so intertwined with the highest corridors of power that children born to emperors would come to be known as “born in purple.”
Early Roman myths claimed that the dye was discovered by a dog of the philosopher Heracles of Tyre, who one day returned with a purple-stained mouth after consuming a few too many murex snails. Some accounts even claim that Phoenicia was named after the dye, with its name meaning the “land of purple.”
The dye was intimately tied with power and wealth in the ancient world, with elites preferring it because the dye would not fade but intensify as it was exposed to sunlight. The dye also became one of the most expensive luxury commodities in the ancient world, becoming a status symbol worn by emperors, senators, generals, and aristocrats alike.
Today, its secrets were lost alongside much of Phoenicia’s heritage, with only some archeological remains left in the Levant and North Africa.
Sources
– David Jacoby, Silk Economics and Cross-Cultural Artistic Interaction: Byzantium, the Muslim World, and the Christian West – Irving Ziderman, Purple Dyes Made from Shellfish in Antiquity – Kassia St Clair, The Secret Lives of Color
