[[Phoenician]] purple is a shade of dye also known as Tyrian Red. It's made from Murex molluscs (predatory sea snails). [[Tyrian purple doesn't need as many snails as people think]], but it was definitely used for [[Mesopotamian Clothing]]. - [b] [The technique to create Tyrian red](https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/colour-purple-dyeing-techniques-phoenician-sea-snails) - only a few people know how to make it; the guy in this article basically spent 12 years reinventing the process. - the snails and process is pretty smelly. - the purple color of the dye takes about 45 minutes to develop (oxidize) - ["] It takes 120 pounds of snails to make just one gram of pure purple dye powder, in a labour-intensive process mastered by the Phoenicians, who produced it in commercial quantities to trade across the Mediterranean and beyond. - ["] “Nothing is wasted. My family eats all the snails after I have removed the glands. I can also bake the shells in large pottery furnaces, then grind them, which results in a very high-quality lime, that can be used as a building material, as a base for Purpurissum (purple paint pigment), makes an excellent fertiliser for acidic soils, and can even be reused instead of soda in dyeing processes,” he says. “And all this from a simple snail.”