At first glance, they looked like spots. In a corner of the Syrian desert, the ruins of the Qatani Palace lie on the banks of a lake that has long since dried up. In 2002, archaeologists were searching for a royal tomb here when they made a discovery.
At the beginning of a deep tunnel, two statues flanked a closed gate-like guard. Inside this door was found an ancient treasure containing 2,000 items, including jewels and a golden hand. But there were also surprising spots on the ground. When samples of these spots were examined in the laboratory, a distinctive purple layer was evident.
These researchers had unknowingly tracked down a rare object from the ancient world. This precious thing had dethroned kings and sustained the power of generations of empires that ruled the world.
The Egyptian queen Cleopatra was so fond of it that the sails of her ships were dyed with it, and some Roman emperors decreed that anyone but them was found to be in possession of it, and that he would be put to death.
This invention was ‘Tyrian Purple’ also known as ‘Shellfish Purple’. According to a Roman decree of 310 AD, it was so highly valued that it was worth three times as much as gold. But now no one knows how this color is formed. By the 15th century, the techniques and recipes for making this dye were lost.
But how did this color fade and can it be revived?
In northeastern Tunisia, where the ancient city of Carthage used to be, a man has been smashing sea snails against a wall in a small garden for the past 16 years. He is trying to extract a material inside them that is similar to the Terran Purple.
A symbol of strength, power and wealth
For centuries this color was reserved for the most influential class of society. It was considered a symbol of power, authority and wealth.
Ancient writers were quite specific about the color being a deep red-purple like clotted blood with a slight black tint. The ancient writer Pliny the Elder wrote about this color that ‘when light fell on it, it shone.’
This particular color did not come off easily either. Perhaps that is why it was loved by various civilizations from Southern Europe, North Africa to Western Asia. They were so closely associated with the Phoenician civilization that they were given the name ‘Purple People’. The color was also named after the city-state of Tyre.
In 40 AD, the king of Mauritania was killed in Rome on the order of the emperor. The reason for the murder was surprising. This king of Mauritania was considered a friend of the Romans, but he committed a great crime. He wore the same purple royal robe to watch a gladiator contest.
It is said that the jealousy associated with this color was often compared to a type of madness.
A puzzle
Oddly enough, what was once the world’s most famous color did not originate from a beautiful stone like lapis lazuli. Rather, it was born in the form of a substance produced by sea snails.
Tyrian Purple produces only three types of snails and all three are not the same color. These include Hezaplex trunculus (which is bluish purple), Bolinus brandaris (red purple) while Stramonita haemastoma is red.
It took a long time and effort to make this color. First of all, snails had to be collected, after which their glands were cut with a knife and this substance was extracted. A Roman writer explained that ‘from the wounds this substance oozed out as if tears were flowing.’
What happened after that, we cannot say for sure. How the substance was transformed from this colorless snail paste into the legendary color is a matter of vague, contradictory, and varied stories.
According to Aristotle, the glands from the throat of a purple fish were used in its preparation. But the matter is further complicated by the fact that colorists used to be quite cautious about their work and did not provide much information. Each colorist had his own recipe and the formula was kept a secret with many complicated steps.
Maria Mello is a professor at the University of Lisbon. He says that the problem is that people have not written the important steps.
The most detailed information comes from Pliny, who described the process of producing this dye in the first century AD.
According to them, after emptying the snails’ glands, salt was added to this substance and then left for three days. It was then cooked at a suitable temperature and this process continued until the amount of the substance was reduced to a sufficient extent. On the 10th day, the color is applied to the cloth to see if it is genuine or not. If the desired color appeared on the fabric, it meant that it was ready.
The problem was that the amount of this substance in each snail was small and one gram of color could require 10,000. Billions of snail shells have been found in areas where this dye was produced. The production of this dye is said to have led to the foundation of the world’s first chemical industry.
Karapanagiotis is a professor at Aristotle University in Greece. “It was not easy to find this color,” he says, explaining that it was different from other colors because the materials needed to produce it were rare and only available under the right conditions.
Sudden decline
On May 29, 1453, Constantinople was captured by the Turks, ending the Eastern Roman Empire or the Byzantine Empire. And with that, this color also ended.
At the time, the industry was centered in Constantinople and the color became associated with Catholicism, worn by Christian religious figures and used in religious literature. But even before that, this color had a lot of impact due to taxation. The Pope decided to change the symbol of Christian power to red. It could be done easily and cheaply.
Another possible reason for this color fall is possible. In 2003, scientists discovered a pile of sea snails in an ancient port in southern Turkey. According to his estimate, the pile was dated to the 6th century AD and contained the remains of 60 million snails.
Surprisingly, at the bottom of the pile were some older specimens that were small in volume and quite young in age. One explanation given was that sea snails were overexploited and their numbers declined. And because of this, the dye industry in the region declined.
However, only a few years after this discovery, there was another discovery that gave rise to the hope of reviving this ancient color.
It was a day in September 2007 when Mohamed Ghassan was walking after dinner in the outskirts of Tunis.
They say that because of the storm the night before, there were jellyfish, crabs and other things on the beach sand.
Then they saw a color emanating from a broken sea snail.
Ghassan immediately remembered a story he read in school that mentioned Tyrian Purple. They went to the local harbor where they saw snails anyway. But the fishermen hated them because they got caught in the nets.
Ghassan took many snails and brought them home. But his initial experience was quite disappointing. That night they tried to break open the snails to find the substance that had appeared to them on the sea.
But they got nothing but meat. They put the snails in a bag to throw away in the morning. The next day the contents of the bag had changed.
“I had no idea at the time that this purple color was initially water-like,” he explains.
Scientists now know that light is needed to stir the chemicals in this colorless substance found in snails. First, the substance becomes colorless, then green, blue, and finally purple.
“If you do this on a clear day, it only takes five minutes,” says Karapangiots.
It was from here that Ghassan became obsessed with discovering the lost method of making this color. Although many people have investigated the secretions of sea snails, one scientist even made a 1.4 kg powder from 1200 snails. But Ghassan wants to do it all the old-fashioned way to discover the original color that has been held sacred for centuries.
They had only been married for a week when they took the snails home with them for the first time. “My wife was disgusted by their smell and almost threw me out of the house.” But I had to do it.
It took them many years to develop the first powder paint. But this first color was not quite the same as Tyrian Purple. After years of learning by mistake, Ghassan eventually learned recipes that he believed were used in ancient times. That is, the use of sunlight and darkness, cooking for different periods of time and, according to Pliny, the mixing of different snail materials.
For his work, Ghassan used images of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I and his wife Theodora. However, later he also compared his color with the clothes of that time. Eventually they were able to achieve a color that closely resembled the original color of Tyrian Purple.
“The color is very vibrant,” he says. It changes and shimmers depending on the light and plays with your eyes.’
After years of experience, Ghassan has been invited to exhibit his colors in exhibitions around the world. He has been invited to the British Museum in London as well as the American Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Now they have also mastered snail food techniques.
But Tyrian Purple is in danger again. The danger this time is that these particular Murex snails are becoming rare. Stramonita haemastoma has already disappeared due to marine pollution and climate change. It is difficult to say whether this color has been revived. It is more likely that it will be lost again.