TUNIS, July 26 — A Tunisian man has pieced together bits of a local secret linked to ancient emperors: How to make a prized purple dye using the guts of a sea snail. “At the beginning, I didn’t know where to start,” said Mohamed Ghassen Nouira, who heads a consulting firm. “I would crush...
Tunisian craftsman Mohamed Ghassen Nouira displays a box where he keeps samples of yarn and fabric dyed with a purple color he extracted from Murex shells at his workshop in the capital Tunis July 11, 2020. — AFP pic
“I would crush the whole shell and try to understand how this small marine animal released such a precious colour.” The industry was “under the control of the emperors because it brought a lot of money to the imperial coffers”, he said. The only clues for unearthing the techniques lie in archaeological sites and artefacts in the Mediterranean, particularly in Tyre in southern Lebanon, and Meninx, on the coast of Tunisia’s Djerba island.
The dye can cost US$2,800 per gramme from some European traders, and prices can reach up to US$4,000, Nouira said.
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