Credited to Lebanon. Murex purple was probably first extracted by the Minoans on Crete in the 20th to 18th centuries BCE, and early production is also attested in southern Italy. Phoenician Tyre gave the dye its name by producing and trading it on a large scale.
How it began
Production of murex purple as a fabric dye by the Phoenicians began around 1200 BCE, when their city-states rose on the coast of present-day Lebanon, and it may have been used there as early as 1570 BCE. Tyre was a center of trade in dyes and textiles, and because of it the color became known as Tyrian purple. The Phoenicians did not discover the dye. Heaps of murex shells on Crete suggest the Minoans extracted it in the 20th to 18th centuries BCE. A legend told by Julius Pollux credits the discovery to the dog of Heracles at Tyre.
How it works
The dye comes from mucus secreted by several species of murex sea snail. Each shell had to be broken at the right point to reach the gland. Pliny the Elder wrote that the glands were salted, steeped for three days and then boiled gently in metal vessels for about ten days, with wool dipped in to test the shade. Archaeological data from Tyre indicate that the snails were collected in large vats and left to decompose, which produced a stench noted by ancient authors. One experiment needed 12,000 snails to make 1.2 grams of dye.
How it spread
The Phoenicians exported the technology and the dyed cloth through their trading network and colonies. They set up dye works on islands off Mogador in Morocco, and purple was an important industry at Carthage. Pliny ranked the purple of Meninx, modern Djerba, second only to that of Tyre. Greeks and Romans continued production. Rome seized the region in 64 BCE.
What changed first
Because it was so laborious to make, the dye was extremely expensive. In the 4th century BCE Theopompus reported that purple fetched its weight in silver, and under the Romans it was valued above gold. Purple cloth became a status symbol restricted by sumptuary laws. By the 4th century CE only the Roman emperor was permitted to wear Tyrian purple, and in Byzantium a child of a reigning emperor was said to be born in the purple.
Where it stands today
Murex dyeing for the Byzantine court ended with the sack of Constantinople in 1204, and production in the Greek and Roman tradition is said to have continued in some form until 1453. Synthetic dyes replaced murex purple in the 19th century. The exact ancient method of mass production has not been fully reconstructed. The dye is still made in small amounts by enthusiasts, and wool dyed with it around 1000 BCE was identified in 2021 at Timna.
