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Tyrian purple is a pigment made from the mucus of several species of Murex snail. Production of Tyrian purple for use as a fabric dye began as early as 1200 BC by the Phoenicians, and was continued by the Greeks and Romans until 1453 AD, with the fall of Constantinople.
Also known as Royal Purple, it was prohibitively expensive and was only used by the highest ranking aristocracy. A similar dye, Tyrian purple, which is purple-red in color, was made from a related species of marine snail, Murex brandaris. This dye (alternatively known as imperial purple, see purple) was also prohibitively expensive.
The most prized Phoenician goods were fabrics dyed with Tyrian purple, which formed a major part of Phoenician wealth. The violet-purple dye derived from the hypobranchial gland of the Murex marine snail, once profusely available in coastal waters of the eastern Mediterranean Sea but exploited to local extinction.
Costly and labor-intensive dyes Tyrian purple (or "royal purple") and tekhelet were historically made by the ancient Phoenicians and Jews respectively, using mucus from the hypobranchial gland of two species commonly referred to as "murex", Murex brandaris and Murex trunculus, which are the older names for Bolinus brandaris and Hexaplex trunculus.
Temples to Melqart are found at at least three Phoenician/Punic sites in Spain: Cádiz, Ibiza in the Balearic Islands and Cartagena. Near Gades/Gádeira (modern Cádiz) was the westernmost temple of Tyrian Heracles, near the eastern shore of the island ( Strabo 3.5.2–3).
It was he who discovered the purple-shell. He was wandering on the coastal part of Tyre city when he saw a shepherd dog eating the so-called purple-shell, which is a small maritime species like a sea snail.
The analysis identified it as an “incredibly rare” lump of Tyrian purple dye, also known as imperial purple, the company said in a May 3 news release.
Members of the family were harvested by early Mediterranean peoples, with the Phoenicians possibly the first to do so, to extract an expensive, vivid, stable dye known as Tyrian purple, imperial purple, or royal purple. The fossil record. The family Muricidae first appears in the fossil record during the Aptian age of the Cretaceous period.
The dog bit a sea snail, and the snail's blood dyed the dog's mouth Tyrian purple. Seeing this, the nymph demanded a gown of the same color, and the result was the origin of purple dye. [2] [3] [4] (Some ancient sources attribute the myth to Melqart, a Tyrian deity identified with Heracles.)
Dor was the most southern settlement of the Phoenicians on the coast of Syria and a center for the manufacture of Tyrian purple, extracted from the murex snail found there in abundance. Dor is first mentioned in the Egyptian Story of Wenamun , as a port ruled by the Tjeker prince Beder , where Wenamun (a priest of Amun at Karnak ) stopped on ...