#Tyrian Purple

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 35: Ancient History XVI and Earlier

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct earlier time grouping. Basically, I'd already moved on to human history, but I'd periodically get a pre-homin suggestion, hence the occasional random item waaay out of it's time period, rather than reopen the category.

In some cases a culture lasted a really long time and I grouped them by whether it was likely the later or earlier grouping made the most sense with the information I had. (Invention ofs tend to fall in an earlier grouping if it's still open. Ones that imply height of or just before something tend to get grouped later, but not always. Sometimes I'll split two different things from the same culture into different polls because they involve separate research goals or the like).

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration. All cultures and time periods welcome.

[its-stimsca]

Hey could you make an aquarium themed stim board pretty please? Idk if you have or not yet

I HAD SO MUCH FUN LOOKING AT ALL THE FISH GIFS

🐟 🐠 🐟 / 🐠 🐟 🐠 / 🐟 🐠 🐟

[gradienty]

Ripe Plum Tyrian Purple (#38024f to #67033d)

[blueiscoool]

In This Ancient Workshop, Greeks Crushed Snail Glands to Make the Purple Dye Worn by Royalty

Archaeologists discovered remnants of a 3,600-year-Old Dye factory on an island in Greece.

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.

As Roman historian Pliny the Elder once wrote, thousands of snails were required to produce a single ounce of purple dye. Its creators had to crush snails’ shells, extract their tiny glands, mix them with salt water and let the concoction steep in the sun, per the study. The result was a “deep purple, lilac or dark red color,” which was used on textiles and paintings, study co-author Lydia Berger, an archaeologist at the University of Salzburg, tells Popular Science’s Laura Baisas.

The fragments of pottery the researchers found on the site were probably containers for dye. As Berger notes, the pottery’s pigments are so high-quality that they could still be extracted and used to dye clothing today. The site also contained stones used for grinding, a waste pit and piles of crushed snail shells.

Eventually, snail purple would become the color of royalty. In the first century C.E., Roman Emperor Julius Caesar named Tyrian purple his official color and inspired successive emperors to don the same hue. But back in the 1500s B.C.E., the color was just beginning to be produced.

At the time, Kolonna was a dense, fortified small town, says Berger, whose inhabitants produced and traded lots of different handcrafted products and raw materials like Mycenaean dye, which wasn’t yet exclusive. Though the dye factory is in an urban area—an oddity among dye workshops—its coastal location is ideal for purple production. As the researchers write, snails had to be caught and kept alive until their glands were harvested.

By analyzing the shells in this particular workshop, researchers concluded that just one snail species was used there: the banded dye-murex. Interestingly, it wasn’t the only animal killed at the site. As Newsweek’s Aristos Georgiou writes, archaeologists also found the burnt bones of several piglets and lambs. Researchers suggest these young mammals were sacrificed in the workshop as part of a ritual, meant to somehow bless the dye’s production.

As they write in the study, the ancient site not only proves that purple dye was manufactured in cities, but also provides “new insights into the technological and possibly spiritual background of the process.”

By Sonja Anderson.

[sun-negotiator]

tyrian purple ⚔️

[no-barbarians-here]

Assassin's Creed Odyssey

[purpela]

The Royal Secret of Tyrian Purple: The Legendary Dye of Kings and Emperors:

What distinguishes Tyrian purple and makes it magnificent is its color, which resembles dried blood and seems black at first but shines when exposed to light. As Homer said, 'blood of purple color.' This is how Pliny the Elder (1st century BC) described the famous dye in his Natural History. Tyrian purple greatly enriched the city. Legend attributes its discovery to Melqart-Heracles, who, after his dog chewed on a murex and returned with a beautiful reddish-purple snout, used the dye from the shell to color a tunic for the nymph Tyros. Tyrian purple was so renowned it became associated with kings and emperors.

Tyrian dyers guarded their secrets fiercely, needing 400 shells to produce just 7 milligrams of dry dye and 10,000 murex to obtain 1.2 grams of crystallized purple!💜

[mydonkeyfeet]

This is really cool, but what is up with this line?

a tunic is a fitted jacket similar to that worn by Captain Picard of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Another article called it a chiton, which is like a giant rectangle (not a jacket), but I don't remember Captain Picard ever wearing anything like that, and he hardly ever wore a jacket either. It's also called a sarapis in the original archaeologists' publication.

Anyway, the garment is tyrian purple and white. I haven't found an image of it yet. I love ancient textiles and dyes.

(Apparently attributing the garment to Alexander is being questioned by other archaeologists, but I'm just excited about an ancient garment.)

[dapurinthos]

anyway:

- Organic residue analysis of pottery from the dye workshop at Alatsomouri-Pefka, Crete

suck on it, tyre.

AND:

KN X 976 from LMIIIA2 (prior to 1300bce); should be read as: “This many royal specialists are located at the purple workshop at da-*83-ja.”

[floffy-biscuit]

Atem giving [unnamed oc] a gift of cloth dyed Tyrian purple.

[hautecouturehues]

[lilithsaintcrow]

"Solid samples of Tyrian purple have been found only in small bits in frescoes at Pompeii and some Egyptian sarcophagi, but these were just accidental areas of concentrated paint particles, not an unused chunk of the raw pigment."

[its-stimsca]

could you do a combined stimboard for Hisuan Zorua and normal Zorua? 🍪🍪 cookie payment

Thank you for your payment anon I am eating the emojis as we speak

🌸 💄 🌸 / 💄 🌸 💄 / 🌸 💄 🌸

[gradienty]

Spray Tyrian Purple (#8ae2f4 to #6a0554)

[mylifeeinfandoms]

Why Tyrian Purple Is So Expensive | Insider Business

[thetalesofrosaspandan]

What is Tyrian Purple?

Writing a short article about the regal color that dates back to the 1st century B.C.E.

Read the article here...