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12 America}! Seashells
colonizers of that region as early as 1500 B.C., were largely due to their
monopoly of the Tyrian purple dye. The ancient cities of Tyre and Sidon
(now Souro and Saidi in Lebanon) became great banking centers and the
crossroads of commerce between Asia, Africa and western Europe. Although
archaeological findings indicate that purple dye from species of Murex was in
use in Crete as early as 1600 B.C. and in Egypt by 1400 B.C., these two
Phoenician cities had managed to monopolize the industry and to expand
their prosperous enterprises by 1000 B.C. The continual search for new beds
of Murex is probably one of the reasons for their later colonization of Malta,
Sicily, Utica, Carthage and Gades (now Cadiz). These ports served as trad-
ing stations and, as evidenced by the great piles of unearthed Murex shells,
as subsidiary purple dye factories. The imperial coins of grateful Tyre bore
for many years the imprint of the Murex shell. It is interesting to note that
the name Phoenicia comes from the Greek phoenix, "red," which may well
allude to the red or magenta color variations of the molluscan purple.
It is now the general consensus that three species of marine snails were
used in the Mediterranean. Although all three were present in many areas,
the city of Tyre employed in the main Murex brandaris, while the great
banks of shells discovered near Sidon in recent times were almost exclusively
made up of Murex trunculus (see plate 10, figs, i and j). The "buccinum"
of the Roman naturalists probably was Thais haemastovm.
The high cost of the purple dye was largely due to the long and arduous
process of manufacture. A recent experimenter used about 12,000 specimens
of Murex brajidaris before obtaining 1.5 grams of pure dye, and he estimated
that one pound of dye in ancient times was worth from $10,000 to $12,000.
The dye-producing fluid is exuded from an elongate gland which is
situated on the inner wall of the mantle between the rectum and the gills.
The fluid is colorless to milky-white when first produced, but when exposed
to direct sunlight, it changes immediately to bright yellow, then passes
through shades of pale-green to bluish and finally red-purple. During this
photochemical process a strong odor is given off which resembles rotting
garlic. The Tyrians collected vast quantities of living snails and ground up
the smaller specimens in caldron-shaped holes in the rocky shore. Larger
specimens were cracked open and the gland-supporting mantle ripped off
and thrown into the holes. Salt was added to this juicy mass to prevent excess
rotting, and then the sun was allowed to act on it for two or three days.
This material was transferred to vessels of tin or lead and then diluted with
five or six times its bulk in water. A ten-day period of moderate boiling fol-
lowed, during which time the scum was constantly removed. Test pieces of
wool were allowed to soak for five hours to ascertain if the desired strength
of dye had been reached.
Our modern concept of purple is quite different from that of the