The ancient empire of the seafaring Phoenicians was built on two things: secrecy and snails.
This is how the Phoenicians told the story of their discovery of Tyrian purple dye—a dye they were first to manufacture. It turned clothes, sails, paintings, plasters, jewelry, and burial cloths into an entrancing, shifting, thrilling, and almost iridescent purple.
‘The Purple People’
The process by which Tyrian purple was made remains to this day enwrapped in mystery and secrecy, and it was the harvesting, manufacturing, and trading of this rare and highly prized dye that made the Phoenician people rich. The well-guarded knowledge of the dye’s making and the Phoenicians’ excellence as sailors and traders, along with their network of colonies, gave them something of a monopoly on Tyrian purple (named for the Phoenician city of Tyre) and earned them the moniker “The Purple People.”
One of the Phoenicians’ colonies was Carthage, and it was from their Carthaginian rivals that the Romans learned of and embraced the pigment. Eventually, peoples all over the Mediterranean Basin treasured this captivating color, noteworthy for the fact that unlike most other textile colors, its sheen did not fade but, rather, like a good wine, grew richer with time and aging.
Cleopatra so loved the pigment that she had the sails of her boat dyed in it. The Persian king Cyrus appareled himself in purple, and the Byzantine Empire inherited the color as the royal hue from their Roman forebears, going so far as to sign edicts in purple ink. To this day, the British royal family wears purple for certain occasions, and it’s the color of the Imperial State Crown.
Of Snails and the Stinky Process
Though we don’t know all the secrets of how Tyrian purple was once made, some things we do know: It was a slimy and smelly process. So pungent was the making of this pigment that in places where it was prepared, the whole city reeked. The dye was made from the secretions of predatory Murex and Purpura sea snails found in the glittering Mediterranean waters. In other words, the dye was made from snail snot. To get it, the dye maker collected or trapped sea snails along coastlines and then sliced open their mucous glands to let the secretions ooze out for collection. Smaller snails were crushed whole. Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder gives the most probable description of the next steps, although ancient accounts differ:“It is sufficient to leave them to steep for a period of three days, and no more, for the fresher they are, the greater virtue there is in the liquor. It is then set to boil in vessels of tin, and every hundred amphorae ought to be boiled down to five hundred pounds of dye, by the application of a moderate heat; for which purpose the vessel is placed at the end of a long funnel, which communicates with the furnace; while thus boiling, the liquor is skimmed from time to time, and with it the flesh, which necessarily adheres to the veins. About the tenth day, generally, the whole contents of the cauldron are in a liquified state, upon which a fleece, from which the grease has been cleansed, is plunged into it by way of making trial; but until such time as the colour is found to satisfy the wishes of those preparing it, the liquor is still kept on the boil. The tint that inclines to red is looked upon as inferior to that which is of a blackish hue.”
Yet for all its unthinkable value, the ancient methods for making the dye were lost in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople, which had become a manufacturing hub. The methods were only recently rediscovered, through experimentation, in 2001.
What one age values may easily and swiftly be lost in the next.
