15 the First Optimal All-Murex All-Natural Purple Dyeing in the Eastern Mediterranean in a Millennium and a Half
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KOREN DHA20 2005 ALL-MUREX ALL-NATURAL PURPLE DYEING IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN Full reference for this article: Koren Z.C. 2005. ‘The First Optimal All-Murex All-Natural Purple Dyeing in the Eastern Mediterranean in a Millennium and a Half ’, Dyes in History and Archaeology 20, pp. 136– 149, Color Plates 15.1–15.5 (Archetype Publications, London). 15 The First Optimal All-Murex All-Natural Purple Dyeing in the Eastern Mediterranean in a Millennium and a Half Zvi C. Koren Introduction reconstruct that ancient majestic craft. Pliny's report was sufficient for a general description PHOENICIAN PURPLES and BIBLICAL BLUES, of the process, but various suppositions and the most royal and sacred of all ancient experimental attempts actually to reproduce an dyeings, were produced from Levantine sea all-natural dye vat, based, at least in part, on snails of the family Muricidae. These mollusks interpreting Pliny's ‘menu’, were either may have been in use for the production of the unsuccessful or implausible, as discussed later. Royal purple pigment from as early as perhaps This paper reports on the first successful 4,000 years ago. A number of articles have experimental reconstruction of the maximal appeared describing the species – commonly (that is, best possible) all-murex completely called murex – that were used in this ancient natural dyeing that could conceivably have biochemical industry.1 The chemistry of the dye been practiced by the ancient eastern and its production from the glandular fluid Mediterranean purple dyer. This reconstructed precursors has been studied,2 and also dyeing process utilizes an all-murex reviewed.3 Analytical methods have been fermentative dye vat for both the dye and developed for the study of the pigment,4 which reductant sources, and also makes optimal use consists of numerous isomeric brominated and of the total dye content by dyeing ‘in-the-shell’. unbrominated indigoids, indirubinoids, and These two findings were not previously other colorants.5 reported upon. This work is based on experiments performed at the author's Ancient historical accounts, especially that 9 of Pliny the Elder,6 which describe dyeing with laboratory between 1993 and 2000 and molluskan species, have been scrutinized in the presented at the Dyes in History and 7 Archaeology meeting in Amsterdam in light of modern science. An experimental 10 reconstruction of the natural dyeing process that November 2001. could have been practiced in antiquity, The natural fermentative reduced dye vat however, has eluded decipherment, until was exhausted with three sequential dyeings recently.8 Pliny recorded his famous 2,000- and the colorimetric properties of each of these year-old description of the various stages of the dyeings were measured according to the ancient purple dyeing craft in the Roman CIELab coordinate system using a empire, as he understood it. But his account computerized reflectance spectrophotometer. suffers from incomplete information and has This is also the first published report on the not been fully comprehended; this has quantitative color characterizations of modern frustrated those researchers who wish to all-natural real-purple dyeings. 136 KOREN DHA20 2005 ALL-MUREX ALL-NATURAL PURPLE DYEING IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN The murex family of snails hypobranchial gland of the living animal.17 Upon puncturing the gland, or when the The family of sea snails whose common animal expires, the enzyme comes into contact approbation is simply the murex family 11 with these precursors and hydrolyzes them, as belongs to the order Neogastropoda. In the a result of which they are then able to undergo Israeli portion of the Mediterranean sea there a series of photochemical and oxidative are over 700 species of molluska,12 of which 13 reactions to form the final pigment. The 16 are Muricidae species. Only three relevant portion of Pliny's description of the members of this clan, however, have been dye extraction stage contains a colorful associated with purple dyeing along the description of the ‘vein’ containing the famous Mediterranean basin, and especially along the ‘flower of purple’: coasts of what are now Israel and Lebanon. These Levantine species include Hexaplex Purples live seven years at most. They stay trunculus (Linnaeus, 1758), also known as in hiding like the murex for 30 days at the Murex trunculus, Phyllonotus trunculus, Trun- time of the rising of the dog-star. They culariopsis trunculus, or simply as ‘trunculus’; collect into shoals in spring-time, and their Bolinus brandaris (Linnaeus, 1758), also rubbing together causes them to discharge known as Murex brandaris or ‘brandaris’ for a sort of waxy viscous slime. The murex short; and Stramonita haemastoma (Linnaeus, also does this in a similar manner, but it 1766), also known as Thais haemastoma, has the famous flower of purple, sought Purpura haemastoma or ‘haemastoma’. In his after for dyeing robes, in the middle of its treatise, Pliny offers various colorful throat: here there is a white vein of very descriptions of purple-producing snails and the scanty fluid from which that precious dye, geographical areas thought to possess the best 14 suffused with a dark rose color, is drained, types. but the rest of the body produces nothing. Several important first-hand observations People strive to catch this fish alive, of the discovery of the murex family of sea because it discharges this juice with its snails at various archaeological excavations 15 life; and from the larger purples they get have been described. From the circumstantial the juice by stripping off the shell, but they archaeological and historical records, one can crush the smaller ones alive with the shell, safely assume that these mollusks, dating from as that is the only way to make them as early as about 1700 BC, were generally used disgorge the juice.18 for purple dyeings, which later became known as Phoenician or Tyrian purples. The chemical The purple pigment produced from evidence, however, decisively confirms that Hexaplex trunculus snails has been found to these murex snails were, in fact, in use for this contain not only the famous DBI dye craft at least by the middle of the 2nd component, but also a plethora of isomeric millennium BC.16 This conclusion is based on brominated and unbrominated indigoids, the ‘chemical fingerprinting’ of modern murex indirubinoids and related compounds, found snails and comparing the constitution of their by means of HPLC analyses.19 dyestuff with that of residual pigmentation found on various fragmentary potsherds from Purple dyeing – very brief history ancient dyeing vats. In all those chemical analyses, the main component of both the This ancient color craft constituted one of the modern and the ancient pigment was 6,6'- most complex of all industrial biochemical dibromoindigo (DBI), which, in this part of the processes practiced in antiquity. Purple dyeing world, is obtainable solely from the murex may have originated as early as about 4,000 family of snails. years ago according to the archaeological The colorless brominated and record mentioned above, and perhaps the first unbrominated indoxyl sulfate precursors to the discoverers of this enterprise were the dye components and the requisite enzyme Minoans of Crete. This supposition is based on purpurase are all contained within the the discovery of murex shells from that period 137 KOREN DHA20 2005 ALL-MUREX ALL-NATURAL PURPLE DYEING IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN at various Aegean sites, and also on wall paintings from that era.20 This ‘Aegean The Bible also mentions two closely theory’ of the discovery of purple dyeing, related – zoologically and chemically – sacral however, is inconclusive as it is based on dyeings, which modern chemical and indirect archaeological evidence. Although a historical research has also discovered to be molluskan purple paint pigment was produced from either the same or different discovered at Thera, no such purple residue Muricid sea snail species: the Biblical blue, has yet been found from an archaeological tekhelet, and the Priestly purple, argaman. Aegean site in a dyeing context, such as on a These two sacred molluskan dyes, together vat fragment. It is a safe, ‘politically correct’ with the reddish scale-insect dye – Sacral archaeological course to take in stating that, scarlet, shani – are first mentioned in the whereas the Minoans and related peoples may Bible soon after the narrative that depicts the have discovered this dyeing craft, history has Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.23 nevertheless correctly credited the Biblical scholars have attributed this event to Phoenicians with, at the very least, perfecting about 3,300 years ago,24 a period the industry and producing royal purple-dyed contemporaneous with an already well- textiles prized above all others. established purple craft along the Pliny discusses the processing of the Mediterranean basin. gland, or ‘vein’, and the dyeing stage in the Archaeological and historical evidence following passage: indicate that murex-dyeing died out in the eastern Mediterranean about a millennium Subsequently the vein of which we spoke and a half ago, some time towards the end of is removed, to this salt has to be added, the Byzantine period in the 7th century AD, about a sextarius [Roman pint] for every when new forces changed the geopolitical hundred libras [Roman pounds]; three landscape of this region. As Bridgeman days is the proper time for it to be states: steeped, as certainly the fresher it [the extract] is the much stronger it is, it Under Muslim rule purple dyeing at Tyre should be heated in a leaden pot, and with and other places along what is now the a single amphora [48 sextarii] of water to Lebanese-Israeli coast ceased, hence the every quinquagenas [fifty] libras [Roman only surviving centers of purple pounds] of dye and kept at a uniform and manufacture were those of Asia Minor and Greece which remained under moderate temperature by a pipe brought 25 from a furnace some way off.