Masters of the Mediterranean Sea, the accomplishments of our Phoenician ancestors are countless.
From navigating the seas, pioneering what is called today “global trade”, and creating the first alphabet that would come to be adopted by most nations, the Phoenicians were also craftsmen who built the fastest and strongest ships of the time from cedarwood.
They created oars and were engineers of infrastructures and massive structures. They were also the first to discover glass blowing.
And among their many achievements that brought their civilization to be named among the greatest is their creation of a color that is commonly associated with royalty, luxury, and power – the color purple.
The color purple is rare to come across in nature, but the ancient Phoenicians figured out how to create it in their port city, Tyre.
According to Ancient History Encyclopedia, “Tyrian purple (aka Royal purple or Imperial purple) is a dye extracted from the murex shellfish, which was first produced by the Phoenician city of Tyre in the Bronze Age.”
The Phoenicians were reputable for their purple dye and exported it across the Mediterranean. “It spread in popularity and was adopted by the Romans as a symbol of imperial authority and status.”
The Phoenicians were known as ‘purple people’ by the Greeks “because the dye would stain the skin of the workers,” records Ancient History
Apparently, they made the dye from the fluid of the shellfish which lived deep in the water.
“The dye was then extracted from the glands of thousands of putrefied crushed shellfish left to bake in the sun. The resulting liquid was used to dye cloth fibers in manipulated variations of colors ranging from pink to violet.”
It would take over ten thousand of shellfish to produce a small amount of dye. The process was difficult and consuming, hence the price of the dye was very costly and only the extravagant could afford it. This why the color purple has been associated with royalty over the years.
One of the main rare qualities of the Phoenician purple dye that made it also highly desirable is that it would do not fade with time like other dyes back then. In fact, it would become more vibrant.
But Tyrian purple has a rather hostile post-production phase: the murder of the workers who ..
