Since each murex produced only a few drops of dye, however, fabrics colored by the murex were extremely expensive. It was then processed to produce the color known as Tyrian purple. The source of this dye was a small sea snail, the murex, which was collected in vast quantities from the warm Mediterranean waters just off the Phoenician coast. Perhaps the most unusual of their commodities was one of their own natural resources, rare and beautiful purple dye. Relics of their dye production have been found around the Mediterranean Sea and as far west as Cádiz, Spain.As the ancient world's greatest sea traders, the Phoenicians dealt in a variety of fabulous items. Then they placed the mass in a covered vat and simmered it with seawater for several more days.įor hundreds of years, through their commerce and colonizing, the Phoenicians maintained both the market for Tyrian purple and their capacity to produce it. Dye makers combined these with salt and exposed the mixture to the open air and the sun for three days. Next, these marine snails were removed from their shells so that their dye glands could be extracted. As many as 12,000 were used to produce the dye for a single garment. First, fishers collected murex shellfish * from the sea in large numbers. Tyrian purple was the most precious dye of its time, in large part because of the labor required to produce it. King Solomon of ancient Israel furnished his temple with “purple wool” produced by an artisan from Tyre.- 2 Chronicles 2:13, 14. Phoenicia, which roughly corresponded to modern-day Lebanon, was noted for its Tyrian purple dye, named after the city of Tyre.
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