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Home , Bronze (color), Libyan Sea, Meninx (town), Thera (Caria), Tyrian purple

The Minoan Origin of Tyrian Author(s): Robert R. Stieglitz Reviewed work(s): Source: The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Mar., 1994), pp. 46-54 Published by: The American Schools of Oriental Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3210395 . Accessed: 17/05/2012 05:38

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http://www.jstor.org The Minoan Origin of

By Robert R. Stieglltz

Tyrianpurple, also known as 'royalpurple,' was the most expensivedye in the ancientworld qensen1963). Indi- rectevidence about its value is providedby Ugaritic textsof the 14thcentury BCE, in whichvarious types of dyed woolens arelisted with theirprices. Some of thesetextiles wereevidently dyed with Tyrianpurple, as theirhigher prices would suggest(Stieglitz 1979:19). Homer used the specialterm haliporphyros,'-purple', to referto this (Odyssey6.53: 306),perhaps in orderto distinguishit frompurple-dye imi- tations.By the time of ,in 301 BCE,we know that wool dyed with Tyrianpurple was literallyworth its weight in , as is statedin his Edicton Maximum Prices 24. Thebasic raw material for the dye productionwas a liquid, obtaineddirectly from the hypobranchialglands of Mediter- raneanmollusks. The shellfishutilized in this dye manufac- turewere primarilyMurex trunculus L. (=Hexaplex) and brandarisL. (=Bolinus). A thirdvariety, Purpura haemastoma L. (=Thais),was used occasionally.Each shellfish produced only a few dropsof the preciousse- cretion,which was thenboiled in saltwater to createthe dye. In orderto pro- duce Tyrian purplein com- mercialquanti- ties,many thousands of shellfishwere required.Pliny, writing in the firstcentury BCE, The three types of purple shells, providesthe only from left to right:Murex trunculus, actualrecipe for the Murex haemastoma. brandaris,Purpura preparationof the dye Thesespecimens were excavatedby solution.He authorat Caesarea . reports the Maritima. (Natural Scaleis in centimeters. Histony Photographsby thatin order the authorunless noted. 9.62.135) to dye 1,000pounds of wool, it was necessaryto use some 200 lbs. of Purpuraflesh (his termfor this shellfishwas bucinum),as well as 111lbs. of murex.In this process,the glandwas extractedfrom the larger specimensonly. The smallshellfish were crushed,shell and all. Sucha procedurewas also observedearlier by (HistoriaAnimalium 5.15.22-25). The entire mass, with water, the flesh mass (it was cookedfor nine days!),produced the was thenplaced in leadenvats and simmered. The exposure of notoriousstench for which this industry was noted in antiq- the liquidto ,coupled with the prolongedsimmering of uity.Pliny (Natural 9.60.127) also statesthat in his day

46 BiblicalArchaeologist 57:1(1994) the best Tyrianpurple in was produced in Laconica The bay of Palaikastro, with the headland and the best in at Meninx. In , the best dye was in background. manufactured at Tyre.

BiblicalArchaeologist 57:1 (1994) 47 Since these shellfish had to be caught by ratherlaborious According to current theories, the production of Tyrian fishing and/or diving in shallow water, the price of the dye, purple was originated and monopolized by the coastal as noted above, was enormous. Therefore,a great variety of Canaanites-those people called Phoenicians by the . dye substituteswas in use during Greco-Romantimes, as we know from an ancient papyrus that lists recipes for producing purple dye substitutes (Lagercrantz 1913).These imitations were produced from plant as .;. well as mineral sources. Still, none were as -fast I- - as the true "royalpurple," hence the continued de- ? ??I mand in antiquity for colored by this highly ...... --- '•" .i - "! "6. t "--. .., ., . ". . . . _ , prized dye. Thedye could be producedin a greatvariety of r - I4. tPalmiknro shades, depending upon the mixture of the different shellfish utilized. Variationscould also be made by chemical means, such as light conditions and reduc- l- awowjuanon ing agents. The resultingcolors included , , and , the latter being considered the most noble of the tints. All shades were utilized primarily

to color ceremonial Two of the best known ; ". .3 ' . " garments. . * "3. * U SUO O':0 7S U -'- examples are the purple stripes on the Roman purpureaand the blue stripes on the Jewish tallit 'prayer shawl'. The Hebrew name for this blue dye was This development presumably occurred sometime in the tekelet(Exodus 26:11;see Ziderman 1987), and we may note Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 BCE).Indeed, the earliest archae- here that according to Rabbinicrulings, only the true tekelet ological evidence for Canaanite purple dye production-the dye (made from mollusks) should be used for coloring the heaps of discarded shells and their fragments-are those prayer shawl (ToseptaMenachot 9,16). These religious rules unearthed at Minet el-Beida (the harbor of ), dated to were probably a response to the use of substitute . the 15th-14th century BCE; and Tel Akko (13th cen-

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The hill of Kastri at the Minoansite of Palaikastro,East Crete, from the south. Thetown is locatedsouth of the hill.The site offereda largesur- BCE);and at Tel Keisan (11th Karmon and tury century BCE; face deposit of Murexshells. Spanier 1988:184).There are, however, archaeologicaland epigraphic indications from the Aegean, which suggest that the 'royal purple' industry was first developed there, by the Minoans on Crete, before 1750 BCE. unearthed in the Aegean at the turn of the twentieth century The current scholarly theories attributingto the Phoeni- suggested that the purple dye industry originated on Crete. cians the origin of the Tyrianpurple industry can actually be The first archaeologicalevidence of purple shells, consti- traced back to the Roman era. The Greek rhetoricianJulius tuting the debris of purple dye production, was already Pollux, in the second century BCE,relates a charming tale reportedby Heinrich Schliemann (1880:115)at .In 1903, (Onomasticon1.45-48) of how the hound of Herakles bit into the British archaeologistR C. Bosanquetfound numerous a murexfish on the shore at Tyreand thus discovered its dye. murexfragments at a Middle Minoan site on the small island Herakles then divulged this delightful discovery to , of Kouphonisi, off the southeast coast of Crete (Bosanquet the king of Tyre.This took place, accordingto Pollux, some 1904:321).However, he describedthe details of his finds only seven generationsbefore the war at Troy. within the text of an unrelated article,which he published 37 Now in the Roman era it was quite fashionable to dis- years later (Bosanquet 1939-40).In 1904, Bosanquet also cuss and theorize on the origins of all sorts of inventions. The found purple shell remains at the large Minoan site of purple industry-which was still quite an active art in that Palaikastroin Eastern Crete. He thereforeproposed that the era-was not exempt from these speculations. Indeed, the Minoan purple dye industry, dated to the Middle Minoan era Romans had themselves developed techniques for the artifi- (2000-1600BCE), preceded the Phoenician industry, but few cial breeding of murexand other shell-fish, in rock-cut pools accepted his opinion. called piscinae.A fascinating description of how to construct We should note here that the murexshellfish are edible, such fish-ponds, adjoining a sea- villa, is provided by and when they are found in small numbers, such as at the Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (De Re Rustica 8.16.7), Early Minoan site of Myrtos (Warren1972:263), they are pre- about 60 BCE.The origins of the Tyrianpurple industry were, sumably associated with the diet and not with the dye. But it therefore,of some interest to the Romans. However, evidence is also likely that these Early Minoan fishermen also discov-

BiblicalArchaeologist 57:1 (1994) 49 41? N6 41

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On the north shore of Kouphonisi. The MiddleMinoan site is mid- way between the chapel on the hilland the beach. ered the dye, in the same way that the hound of Herakles did many centuries later. In 1981, I set out to investigate sea-purple origins by analysis of pertinent archaeologicaland epigraphic data, Murexfragments from starting with a coastal survey on Crete. At Palaikastro,which the south slope of the is identified with Classical Heleia, I found a large surface Kastriat Palaikastro. deposit of murexremains on the southern slopes of the Kas- tri. Most of these were fragmentary,but some were small whole shellfish. These are, presumably,from the same deposit noted by Bosanquet in 1904. In addition, numerous murexare located within the remains of a well-built stone structure located on a headland in the bay southeast of the Kastri. On the islandof Kouphonisi,which is identified with Classi- cal Leuke,I succeededin locatingthe Minoan site visited by Bosanquetin 1903.It is situated on the slope of a hill overlook- ing the northshore of the island.Besides the murexremains, Murexfrag- pottery fragments, and foundationsof a large stone structure, ments fromthe head- it should be noted thatthere are quite a few obsidian chips on land in the bayof the surfaceof the site. Palaikastro. The water source for the modern fisherman is now locat- ed on the shore directly below the Minoan site. It was presumably also utilized in antiquity,for near it are remains of substantialindustrial facilities. I believe that these are the remains of an actual purple dye factory,probably dated to the Hellenistic era. At that time, the island of Leuke was a center

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Stone structure remains at the Minoansite on Kouphonisi. Remains of stone basins and well, nearthe shore on Kouphonisi. of Tyrianpurple manufacture,as is known from Cretan water are requiredin the dye production. Some excavations inscriptionsof the second centuryBCE (Guarducci 1940:104). of the Greco-Romantown of Leuke, located on the shore These manufacturingremains near the water source west of this area, have been undertaken (Papadakis 1983), include stone and clay vats, as well as basins and channelsfor but as far as I know, the industrial site itself has not been the handling of liquids. The locationof the site on the shore excavated, and its date is thereforestill speculative. near a water source is ideal, since both sea-water and fresh- In addition to Palaikastroand Kouphonisi, murex

The modem water source at Kouphonisi:a stone chamberwas builtover the spring. remains have also been found at other Aegean Bronze Age , dated to the Late Cypriote IIIperiod (Reese 1987:205). sites. These include the Middle Minoan levels of three major Akrotiri,on Thera,has now yielded remains suggesting "prob- sites: Kastrion the island of Kythera (Coldstreamet al. 1973: able local production"of purple dye (Aloupi et al. 1990),dated 36, 282), Knossos itself (Hutchinson 1962:239)-presumably to Late Minoan IA, ca. 1550 BCE. from a near-by factory on the shore-and at the palace of To this archaeologicalevidence from the Aegean, we should Mallia (Vogler 1984). In the Late Helladic era, we find murex also add a significant epigraphic find. The Mycenaean Greek remains both in and outside of :at Troy VI, dated to term po-pu-re-ia'purple' is found in several administrativeLin- about 1425 BCE(Blegen 1937), and at Hala Sultan Tekkeon ear B tabletsfrom Knossos, which deal with allocations. One of these tablets (KN X976) actually contains the expres- sion wa-na-ka-te-ropo-pu-re-[ I 'royal purple'. This is the first written attestation of a term which in later ages became syn- onymous with 'Tyrianpurple'. It is significant that this term is first attested in a Mycenaean Greek text from Knossos. The ClassicalGreek root porphyr-is used to designate both the mollusk and its dye, but it is not an Indo-Europeanword. Astour (1965) proposed, unconvincingly to my mind, to de- rive this term from a Canaaniteroot *parparmeaning 'to churn, as. to boil'. However, the Canaaniteword for the purple mollusks *". -it was evidently hillazbn-a word of unknown origin attested only in TalmudicHebrew. The actual Phoenician terms for the ~i- .: shellfish and its dye are still not attested. As for the Mycen- aean term porphyr-,I would suggest that this was originally a Minoan word, borrowed by the Mycenaeans when they learned from the Minoans to produce the dye. Remains of a large stone-cut vat, about 2 m. in diameter(below). It may well be that Minoan art has preserved depictions View in frontof the brokenspout (above). of garmentsdyed with 'royal purple'.Probably the best known Minoan sarcophagus, dated to about 1450 BCE,is the one found at Hagia Triadathat illustrates elegantly dressed men p . . and women. Theirgarments are decoratedwith purple stripes of various shades. A famous Minoan priestess figurine, 1600 BCE,also has what appearto be purple decorationson her attire, as do the dresses of the noble ladies depicted on the frescoes of Thera, about 1550 BCE. After Minoan power on Crete was supplanted by that of the MycenaeanGreeks, about 1450BCE, the Greeks,Trojans, and the peoples of continued to produce the purple dye. .... We should recall here the Homeric reference (Iliad4.141) to purple colored ivory (!) used by Maionianand Carianwomen. The Troadtradition of manufacture was also Tyrianpurple :i?: noted by Aristotle (HistoriaAnimalium 5.15.547), who mentions , ?-.. .,, the waters off , Lekton, and as being rich in purple shells. The Canaanite dye industry in the Levant was certainly not a Indeed, the Greeks, Phoenicians, and others ? monopoly. ?• "•; , continued to manufactureTyrian purple throughout antiq- uity. By the Roman era,it was alreadyunknown who had first invented the 'royalpurple' dye, and it was only then attributed to a mythical Phoenician source and dated to the era before the Trojanwar. The archaeologicalevidence now availablefrom the Aegean suggests that this industry was not of Mycenaean, nor of a Canaanite origin. It indicates that the Minoans on Crete and some Minoanized islanders, such as those on Kythera,were already manufacturingsea-purple in the Middle Minoan per- iod, ca. 1750 BCE.It also seems certain that this dye was being produced by the people of Thera at the end of the Middle Minoan era. The Mycenaeans,Trojans, Cypriotes, and Canaanitesthen continued to develop this industry in the Late Helladic period. The Bronze Age Canaanites and their Iron Age Phoenician Priestess from descendants were not the actual originatorsof this dye. It was Akrotiri fresco, Thera,ca. 1550 BCE.She boasts red and on her dress. most likely a Minoan contribution,developed before 1750BCE, purplestripes which was then adopted by others, including the Canaanite- Phoenicians. Acknowledgements This is a revised version of a paper firstread at Citieson the Sea-Past " ' . . -. . . and Present:1st InternationalSymposium on Harbors,Port Cities and CoastalTopography, , September 22-29,1986; and at the 1989Annual Meetingof the AmericanSchools of OrientalResearch (Anaheim, CA), November21, 1989.My conclusionswere firstreported by TheStar-Ledger, Newark, NJ, on February8, 1982,p. 14. The fieldworkon Cretefor this paper was made possible with the aid of a grant fromthe RutgersUni- versityOffice of Researchand SponsoredPrograms, to whom I should like to expressmy sinceregratitide. ' fl h1r, DI Bibliography r- . Aloupi, E.,et al. 1990 Analysisof a PurpleMaterial found at Akrotiri.Pp. 488-490 in Theraand the Aegean World III, Vol. 1:Archaeology. Proceed- ings of the ThirdInternational Congress, , Greece (September1989), edited by D.A.Hardy, et al.London: Thera Foundation. sarcophagus, ca. 1450 BCE,depicting funerary rituals. Thegarments of the mournersbear colored stripes.

BiblicalArchaeologist 57:1 (1994) 53 ?' '

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11

Robert R. Stieglitz received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1971. He has excavated in the U. S., Greece, and Israel and has surveyed throughout the Mediterranean world. Dr. Stieglitz is the recipient of numerous academic honors and awards and the author of some one hundred articles on the ancient and Mediterranean. Formerly curator of the National Maritime Museum, Haifa, he is now excavating on the Mediterranean coast of Israel. Stieglitz has taught at universities and institutes in Greece, Israel, and the United States. Currently, he is Associate Pro- fessor of Hebraic Studies at Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey. Minoan snake-goddess from Knossos,ca. 1600 BCE.Note elaborately decorateddress with its faded stripes,originally of darkblue.

Astour,M.C. Papadakis,N.P. 1965 The Originof the Terms"," "Phoenician," and "Pur- 1983 KoufonisiIsland: Delos of the LibyanSea. Archaiologia 6:58-65 ple."Journal of NearEastern Studies 24:346-350. (Greek,with Englishsummary). Blegen,C.W. Reese,D.S. 1937 Excavationsat Troy,1937. American Journal of Archaeology 1987 PalaikastroShells and BronzeAge Purple-DyeProduction 41:553-597. in the MediterraneanBasin. Annual of theBritish School of Bosanquet,R.C. Archaeologyat Athens82:201-206. 1904 Some 'LateMinoan' Vases found in Greece.Journal of Hellenic Schliemann,H. Studies24:317-329. 1880 Ilios:The City and Country of theTrojans. London: 1939-40Dikte and the Templesof DictaeanZeus. Annualof theBritish Stieglitz,R.R. Schoolof Archaeologyat Athens40:60-77. 1979 CommodityPrices at Ugarit.Journal of theAmerican Coldstream,J.N., et al. OrientalSociety 99:15-23. 1973 Kythera:Excavations and Studies.Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes. Vogler,H. Guarducci,M. 1984 Die Spurenfriiher Fierberei im Minoerreichauf Kreta. 1940 Contributialla Topografiadella CretaOrientale. Rivista di DeutscherFierber-Kalender 88:193206. Filologia18:99-107. Warren,P. Hutchinson,R.W. 1972 Myrtos:An EarlyBronze Age Settlement in Crete.The British 1962 PrehistoricCrete. Baltimore: Penguin. Schoolof Archaeologyat Athens SupplementaryVolume 7. Jensen,L.B. Thamesand Hudson. 1963 Royal Purpleof Tyre.Journal of NearEastern Studies 22:104-118. Ziderman,I. Karmon,N. and Spanier,E. 1987 FirstIdentification of AuthenticTek6let. Bulletin of theAmerican 1988 Remainsof a PurpleDye IndustryFound at TelShiqmona. Schoolsof OrientalResearch 265:25-33. IsraelExploration Journal 38:184-186. Lagercrantz,O. 1913 PapyrusGraecus Holmiensis. Recepte fuer Silber, Steine und Purptur.Uppsala-Leipzig.

54 BiblicalArchaeologist 57:1 (1994)