For he dressed in a scarlet tunic, and wore over it a toga bordered with purple". Plutarch also mentions the purple color in the Life of Romulus: "And many were the people who came together, while he (Romulus ) himself sat in front, among his chief men, clad in purple", and by reporting the criticism against him, "to renounce his popular ways, and to change to the ways of a monarch, (…). Plutarch in the Life of Aratus narrates about "the priest of Aratus, who (during sacrificial ceremonies) wore a headband, not pure white but purple and white". In the beginning of Roman times, the prerogative of wearing the purple was extended to senators and priests, becoming the symbol of power or high dignity. When he learned the truth about the purple dye, he says that these people, as well as their clothes, were full of guile" (2). Seizing the purple garment, he was curious as to how it was manufactured. The king of Ethiopia was suspicious of Cambyses. Herodotus relates that he dispatched spies, " the fish eaters, with gifts of which a purple coat, a collar and braided gold bracelets, and alabaster box containing incense with an earthenware jar filled with palm wine. After the conquest of Egypt, Cambyses, king of Persia, prepared an expedition, in 525 BC, against Ethiopia. Under the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III (744-721 BC), the Phoenician cities added rich clothing in purple, with the precious gifts in gold and silver, sent to the Assyrian monarchs.ĭuring the Persian period (550-330 BC), only kings were worthy to dress with purple fabrics. In Assyrian registers, a mural inscription, from the eighth century BC, mentions this wool in the tributes list of an Assyrian king.
Those commercial transactions indicate the presence of the purple industry on the Canaanite coast in the middle of the second millennium BC (1). Such texts lead us to think that the wool was distributed to the dyers in order to be colored, and then recuperated by merchants who resold it locally or exported it. In 1934, François Thureau-Dangin (1872-1944), archaeologist and French epigraphist published a cuneiform text from Ugarit, which stipulated that in about 3500 years ago, a local merchant noted the quantity of purple wool owed to him by some persons, who appear to be dyers. In order to please his sweetheart, Melqart, ordered to collect the seashells and to prepare a tincture of this crimson color, and make a dyed tunic witch delight the heart of the nymph.įrom an archaeological point of view, the old remains of the dye-works discovered on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, proved that the purple dye industry existed there since ancient times. The nymph admired the color and asked the God to offer her a cloth with such a beautiful color. While he was walking on the beach with the nymph Tyros, his dog found a Murex and munched on it.
The legend tells that the discovery of the purple was attributed to the god Melqart Heracles.
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