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Writer's pictureAndy McIlvain

3600-year-old Mycenaean Purple Dye "Factory" Discovered On A Greek Island

Color!

Color in all its forms is a gift.

God created color as part of the toolbox He used in creation.

Color can be described as "the property possessed by an object of producing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way the object reflects or emits light."

But just as we cannot know what "Fire" is for example we do not truly know what color is.

Then there is the conundrum of the color blue. Blue is rare in nature and many times we do not see blue. For further reading: Why is the color blue so rare in nature?

And did you know that Blue Jays are not blue but white? For further reading: All About Blue Jays: Are They Actually Blue?


As humans, we have always valued certain colors no matter how difficult they are to obtain.

Mycenaean Purple is one of those colors and even today it is made by the same process it was almost 4,000 years ago.

A recent discovery of an ancient dye factory on a Greek island has renewed interest in the beautiful purple.



Video from Auld Boy


3600-year-old Mycenaean Purple Dye "Factory" Discovered On A Greek Island

"On an island in Greece, researchers have discovered a 3,600-year-old workshop that once turned out a rare purple dye coveted by royalty—and made from snail glands.

Archaeologists were excavating recently in the Bronze Age town of Kolonna, on the Greek island of Aegina, when they discovered two Mycenaean buildings. As the researchers write in a study published in the journal PLOS ONE, the buildings date to the 16th century B.C.E., and the older one contained pigmented ceramics, grinding tools and heaps of broken mollusk shells: all indicative of a purple dye factory.

In this workshop, ancient Greeks produced the vibrant pigment known as Mycenaean purple—or, as the Romans called it, Tyrian purple. First manufactured by the Phoenicians in present-day Lebanon, the dye was extracted from the mucus of the Mediterranean’s carnivorous sea snails. Across the region, only the rich owned anything dyed Mycenaean purple, as the color’s production was painstaking.

This video looks at the press release as well as the journal which was published which discusses the significance of the findings." from the video introduction


Mycenaean/Tyrian Purple Dye Today

Why Tyrian Purple Dye Is So Expensive | So Expensive | Insider Business

Video from Business Insider


"Making authentic Tyrian purple dye starts with extracting a murex snail gland. After a series of painstaking steps, Tunisian dye maker Mohamed Ghassen Nouira turns as much as 45 kilograms of snails into a single gram of pure Tyrian purple extract. When he's done, he can sell it for $2,700. Some retailers sell a gram of the pigment for over $3,000. In comparison, 5 grams of synthetic Tyrian purple costs under $4.

So, why is real Tyrian purple so hard to make? And is that why it's so expensive?

Mohamed Ghassen Nouira's website: https://www.argamanou.com/' from the video introduction


Link To Article:


Link To Journal:



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