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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.
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.
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.
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.
A Phoenician coin depicting the legend of the dog biting the sea snail. Gregory of Nazianzus and Cassiodorus relate [clarification needed] how Tyrian Heracles and the nymph Tyrus were walking along the beach when Heracles' dog, who was accompanying them, devoured a murex snail and gained a beautiful purple color around its mouth. Tyrus told ...
"Herakles the philosopher, called the Tyrian, lived in the reign of King Phoenix. 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.
See text. Muricidae is a large and varied taxonomic family of small to large predatory sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks, commonly known as murex snails or rock snails. With over 1,700 living species, the Muricidae represent almost 10% of the Neogastropoda.
Bolinus brandaris (originally called Murex brandaris by Linnaeus and also Haustellum brandaris), and commonly known as the purple dye murex or the spiny dye-murex, is a species of medium-sized predatory sea snail, an edible marine gastropod mollusk in the family Muricidae, the murex snails or the rock snails. [1]
History of Phoenicia. Phoenicia was an ancient Semitic-speaking thalassocratic civilization that originated in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon. [1] [2] At its height between 1100 and 200 BC, Phoenician civilization spread across the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula .
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.)