J.H.'s Fishing Wharf

Purple robes where found by Alexander the Great in the royal treasury when he conquered Persia in 331 BCE., the robes where almost 200 years old. Purple clothes were reserved for the rich up until the twentieth century. England is credited with creating the first synthetic purple dye. Ancient religious and royal robes were often purple and the dye they used came from one of several kinds of shellfish. It is believed that they most often used a shellfish known as the Murex (see picture), which lives in the Mediterranean sea's shallow reefs. The Tyrian purple dye is very costly to make since the shells are very rare and only a few drops can be used from each shellfish.

Off the coast of Syria and Lebanon is where many shellfish of this type are known to live – Tyrian dye (purple) takes its name from the city of Tyr which is situated in what is now southern Lebanon – this is why many used to believe that purple dyes came from this area. It is not surprising then to learn that the name of the old land of Canaan (Greek: Phoenicia) means land of purple.

New archaeological finds, however, suggest that it was in fact Crete that made and used purple dye first. Evidence from Canaan, of the production of purple dye, dates to circa fifteen century BCE. While the evidence from Crete show that they developed the use of purple dyes around 1750 BCE, which shows that the Minoans on Crete used purple dyes before Canaan.