Carthage Blog 4 - Tyrian Purple
- Scot Stoddard
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
What is Tyrian Purple, you might ask?
Tyrian Purple is a natural reddish-purple natural fabric dye. The name Tyrian refers to the City of Tyre, Lebanon, one of the first, if not the first, Phoenician City State. For a discussion on Tyre and the track Tyre, visit Blog Post 2!
The dye itself is made from mucus secretions of various sea snails in the family Muricidae, formerly known as Murex. In ancient times, extracting this dye took tens of thousands of snails and was very labor intensive, making it very expensive and highly valued. It was a highly sought-after commodity! At the time, biological pigments were very difficult to come by, and the manufacturers kept their trade secrets just that, secrets. Production of Tyrian Purple began as early as 1200 BC and was continued on by the Greeks and Romans until 1453 AD with the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire and Constantinople. Some historians believe production may have started even earlier than that and that the word Phoenicia itself may mean "Land Of Purple".
As Tyrian Purple was so expensive to produce, it soon became associated with wealth and power. Its production was widespread across the Phoenician empire, and it produced a lot of revenue. The idea of purple being elite contributes to the widespread modern belief that purple is a royal color; in fact, the alternate name for Tyrian Purple was Royal Purple. The dye was greatly valued also because the color did not fade over time, but instead brightened with weathering.
As with all biological materials such as this, rapid decomposition took place, and there are no remaining samples of fabric dyed in this fashion from Phoenician times. However, scientists have put much of research into this topic and believe they have been able to reproduce a highly-similar facsimile of this color. We even found the RGB code for something that should be pretty close to Tyrian Purple, and you can see that splash of color in the cover art above! However, it's believed that RGB monitors cannot even accurately reproduce the exact color. I think we got it close, let's say.
A little more background
This color-fast, non-fading dye was prized by many cultures, with royals, especially of the Romans, using it to color ceremonial robes. Archeological data from Tyre indicates that the snails were collected in large quantities. The production process is further described, with unknown accuracy, by Pliny the Elder, a Roman naturalist, author and army commander. I quote, from Wikipedia, here.
"The most favourable season for taking these [shellfish] is after the rising of the Dog-star, or else before spring; for when they have once discharged their waxy secretion, their juices have no consistency: this, however, is a fact unknown in the dyers' workshops, although it is a point of primary importance. After it is taken, the vein [i.e. hypobranchial gland] is extracted, which we have previously spoken of, to which it is requisite to add salt, a sextarius [about 20 fl. oz.] to every hundred pounds of juice. It is sufficient to leave them to steep for a period of three days, and no more, for the fresher they are, the greater virtue there is in the liquor. It is then set to boil in vessels of tin [or lead], and every hundred amphorae ought to be boiled down to five hundred pounds of dye, by the application of a moderate heat; for which purpose the vessel is placed at the end of a long funnel, which communicates with the furnace; while thus boiling, the liquor is skimmed from time to time, and with it the flesh, which necessarily adheres to the veins. About the tenth day, generally, the whole contents of the cauldron are in a liquefied state, upon which a fleece, from which the grease has been cleansed, is plunged into it by way of making trial; but until such time as the colour is found to satisfy the wishes of those preparing it, the liquor is still kept on the boil. The tint that inclines to red is looked upon as inferior to that which is of a blackish hue. The wool is left to lie in soak for five hours, and then, after carding it, it is thrown in again, until it has fully imbibed the colour."
The process of extracting this dye also produced, as a side effect, a quite awful and undesirable stench as the snails were placed in a large vat, left to decompose and were possibly boiled! This fact was noted by many ancient authors. Despite Pliney the Elder's description, not much is known about the subsequent steps, and while modern scientists are close, they still cannot accurately reproduce the exact color. Some believe the process was accomplished by double-dipping the fabric into two separate murex-based dyes to achieve the Tyrian Purple color, one being a more reddish-purple dye and the second being more indigo. The same extraction process from different murex species produced different colored dyes. There was also a Tyrian Red and Tyrian Blue, but the purple was the most highly-regarded.
How about some mythology?
Roman theologians and scholars have related a tale that is quite interesting, actually. They have told the story of how the great Phoenician deity Melqart and his "partner" the nymph Tyrus (a personification of the City of Tyre, and for whom it was named) were walking along a beach when Melqart's dog, who was accompanying them, discovered a sea snail and bit into it, leaving a most-beautiful purple stain around its mouth. Tyrus proceeded to tell Melqart that she would never accept him as her lover until he created for her a robe of the exact same color. So what did Melqart do? Well, of course, he started collecting sea snails, extracted the dye from them and produced the first garment in the color later to be known as Tyrian Purple. What else is a dude supposed to do? Man, I tell ya, some of the things we have to go through! This legend is even depicted on the very first Tyrian coins, and again later on Roman coins.
Let's talk about the music!
I've never written a song about a color. So the challenge here was: How do you hear a color? Like every other track on the album, it's an instrumental track; there's no lyrics to describe what the story is. So this presented a very interesting challenge. The whole track had to set a mood, a vibe. It's a simple, relaxed track, and the shortest track on the album, but I think it's beautiful in its simplicity, and the melodies presented are memorable.
I'll start with the chord progression, for any of you who are guitarists (or whatever your instrument) and may want to try this. I play the e minor chord in root position, then the b-7 and a-7 are barre chords.
Verse:
e mi to b-7 to a-7
e mi to b-7 to a-7 to C+7
e mi to b-7 to a-7
e mi to b-7 to a-7 to C dim 7
Here we see the basic structure. In the last phrase, the C Major 7 chord is replaced with a C diminished 7 chord (C, Eb, Gb, A), which contains the note Gb, which will resolve nicely into the next chord for the "chorus", which will be G major. The Gb is the Major 7 step of the G chord, so there's a half-step resolution into the G chord. This could have been accomplished with a B7 chord (B, D#, F#, A), F# = Gb, but I find that resolution boring and overused. I love diminished chords in this circumstance. It adds tension and anticipation and resolves more dramatically.
So then again, perfect simplicity in the chorus. While there was an abundance of minor seven chords in the verse, in the chorus we're going to switch to a more major feeling with the chord chain:
G to C+7 to Bb+7 to a-7.
e-7 to C+7 to b-7 -- and now to the B7, the dominant 7 chord. Only because we don't want to overuse the dim 7 chord. So basically a v7 - i cadence here.
And that's it; that's the whole chord chain for the whole song!
Now, there are three distinct sections containing this chord chain, all the same chords, but the feeling changes in each section. The opening section and initial introduction of the chord chain and melody is slow, half-time. I guess you could say this represents Melqart's dog and the discovery of Tyrian Purple. This is the exposition section, introducing everything. The drums are slow, laid back and quiet, the pad synth is doing what a pad synth does, the rhythm guitars are clean, just strumming the chords on the downbeat with some chorus on them. The lead has some overdrive on it, going into the clean channel on my tube amp, the gain pushed to just a bit of breakup.
The instrument set in the entire track remains the same: Two rhythm guitars, panned hard left and right, a pad synth playing chords, lead guitar, bass and drums. That's it. Again, simplicity.
In Section 2, the tempo is the same, but it's straight time, giving the track a livelier feeling. The rhythm guitars are working harder now, with a funky strum. The drums pick up and play a funkier beat. The bass is playing more all over the neck now, as opposed to the longer sustained notes in the opening sequence, with little fills and inflections. The lead has more gain on it, stacking drive pedals. The melody here is a variation of the opening sequence melody, but there's a lot more notes being played. We're having fun here. This section represents how the commodities created with Tyrian Purple brought prosperity to the Tyrians as it became a sought-after product and increased revenues were being realized.
Now we have a slight transition into more of a straight rock feeling for the last section, and a key change. Now we're going to modulate up a third and we're going to be in G minor. This section represents the height of the Carthaginian empire and how trade became dominant and very successful.
So the chords go:
g-7 to d-7 to c-7, with the end of the phrases ending in E+7 and e dim 7 alternatively, as in the example in Section 1. We don't get to the chorus on this pass; it ends on the e dim 7 resolving back to the g minor chord, which is now the root after the key change. So again, v7 - I, only in G minor this time.
Now the rhythm guitars have some dirty overdrive on them, the drums and bass are straighter, and the lead is kicked up even more with a bit more gain and delay and yet another variation of the original melody.
And that's it, your basic four minute track. But I think it tells the story. I hope you hear purple when you listen to it!
Conclusion
I hope you've enjoyed this short read and gained a little something from the background and history behind this track. It's really one of my favorite tracks on the album as it's just different. It's the only track to not have anything really heavy in it, and as it's Track 4 on the album, it gives the listener a little break before we get into the really serious stuff, like Melqart, Battle Elephants, Sicilian and Punic wars and Hannibal. We will get to all these tracks in the coming blogs!
There's been several updates on the site. I now have the album cover art published on the home page, as well as being in place in the music player on the Carthage page. All the tracks for the album are in the player, although Tracks 10-12 are demos at this point. Cat has started pulling in all the stems to mix down these last three tracks, and you'll have a release date very soon. Please read through the other blogs for more background on the tracks. And please subscribe to the site; there's going to be a lot of news and updates coming up. Thank you for reading and supporting my music. Enjoy!
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