Tyrian purple
Tyrian purple , also known as
royal purple or
imperial purple, is a purple-red
dye made by the ancient Canaanites/
Phoenicians in the city of
Tyre, from a mucus-secretion of the hypobranchial gland of a marine
snail known as the
Murex brandaris or the spiny dye-murex.
The Phoenicians also made a purple-blue
indigo dye, called
royal blue or
hyacinth purple, which was made from a related species of marine snail, called the
Murex trunculus is a marine snail [i], whose hypobranchial gland secrets a mucus that the ancient ...
or the banded dye-murex.
Tyrian purple was expensive: the fourth-century BCE historian Theopompus reported, "Purple for dyes fetched its weight in silver at Colophon" in Asia Minor.
Encyclopedia
Tyrian purple , also known as
royal purple or
imperial purple, is a
purple-red dye made by the ancient Canaanites/
Phoenicians in the city of
Tyre, from a mucus-secretion of the hypobranchial gland of a marine
snail known as the
Murex brandaris or the spiny dye-murex.
The Phoenicians also made a
purple-blue indigo dye, called
royal blue or
hyacinth purple, which was made from a related species of marine snail, called the
Murex trunculus is a marine snail [i], whose hypobranchial gland secrets a mucus that the ancient ...
or the banded dye-murex.
Tyrian purple was expensive: the fourth-century BCE historian Theopompus reported, "Purple for dyes fetched its weight in silver at Colophon" in Asia Minor.
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 or "Natural History" is an encyclopedia [i] written by Pliny the Elder [i]. ...
:
The ancient method for mass-producing the two murex dyes has not yet been successfully reconstructed, but this special "blackish clotted blood" color, which was prized above all others, is believed to be achieved by double-dipping the cloth, once in the indigo dye of
H. trunculus and once in the purple-red dye of
M. brandaris.
The Roman mythographer Julius Pollux, writing in the second century BC, asserted 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.
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, like most high chroma
pigments, cannot be accurately displayed on a computer display, 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 , which has been equated to "Tyrian red" , a term which is often used as a synonym for Tyrian purple.
References
See also
External link
