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Tyrian purple (also known by the Greek phoinikies) is a purple dye made in the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre from a secretion of Spiny Dye-Murex (Murex brandaris), a marine snail. A similar dye, "Hyacinth Purple" was made from the related Banded Dye-Murex Murex trunculus.
The dye was expensive: the fourth century BCE historian Theopompus reported that "purple for dyes fetched its weight in silver at Colophon Asia Minor" Theopompus, cited by Athenaeus * in c. 200 BCE; according to Gulick, Charles Barton. (1941). Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
The fast, non-fading dye was an item of luxury trade, prized by Romans, who used it to colour ceremonial robes. Pliny the Elder described the dyeing process of two purples in his Natural History Pliny the Elder, The Natural History (eds. John Bostock, H.T. Riley) Book IX. The Natural History of Fishes. Chapters 60-65. *:
The Roman mythographer Julius Pollux, writing in the second century BC, asserted (Onomasticon I, 45–49) that the purple dye was first discovered by Heracles, or rather, by his dog, whose mouth was stained purple from chewing on snails along the coast of the Levant. Recently, the archaeological discovery of substantial numbers of Murex shells on Crete suggests that the Minoans may have pioneered the extraction of Royal purple centuries before the Tyrians. Dating from colocated pottery, suggests the dye may have been produced during the Middle Minoan period in the 20th–18th century BC. Reese, David S. (1987). "Palaikastro Shells and Bronze Age Purple-Dye Production in the Mediterranean Basin," Annual of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, 82, 201-6).Stieglitz, Robert R. (1994), "The Minoan Origin of Tyrian Purple," Biblical Archaeologist, 57, 46-54.
The main chemical constituent of the Tyrian dye was discovered by Paul Friedländer in 1909 to be 6,6′-dibromoindigo, a substance that had previously been synthesized in 1903. However, it has never been synthesized commercially.
Web colour
The true colour of Tyrian purple is debated, but this swatch – – is an approximation. This is the sRGB colour #990024, intended for viewing on an output device with a gamma of 2.2. It is a representation of RHS colour code 66A "RHS, UCL and RGB Colors, gamma = 1.4, fan 2", Azalea Society of America website (this gives the RGB value #b80049, which has been converted to #990024 for the sRGB gamma of 2.2), which has been equated to "Tyrian red" Buck, G. Buck Rose Website, Page 5 [http://www.ag.iastate.edu/centers/cad/Eroses.html, a term which is often used as a synonym for Tyrian purple.
References
See also
External link
Natural dyes | Mollusc products
Purpur | Purpur (Farbstoff) | Pourpre de Tyr | Purpuras | Purper (verfstof)
"Tyrian purple"