The Ancient Phoenicians were famed in the known world of their time as world-travelers by sea, trade, and artisanship.
Centrally located on the Mediterranean the Phoencians traded finished goods between nations and even transported from England raw material for the creation of bronze.
Phoenician Trees and Seashells
Despite their massive trading empire of others’ goods, they had a few gleaned from their own land: trees and sea shells.
King Solomon built his temple with cedars from Lebanon, the land of Phoenicia.
The Phoenicians are also famous for purple dye extracted from murex shells sourced in their harbor.
In fact their very name is derived from the Greek phoinix meaning purple or red.
Creating Purple Dye
The intolerably putrid process of extracting the dye in various hues of pink to purple to red to blue was expense only the elite, and royals, could afford.
Piles of broken shells from these extraction facilities abound in today’s land of the Phoenicians.
This lovely dye was also valued for its color-fastness. The hues obtained from the seashells kept their vivid tones far better than the more popular plant dyes of ancient times.
Although recreating the extraction of dye from murex shells was beyond our scope, a simpler form of dying would at least be of great interest to my daughter.
My Daughter’s Purple Dye Project
We more simply used red cabbage just to teach a basic dying process. After chopping some red cabbage we added it to a pot of water to boil on the stove. After it reached boiling point, we took it off the burner, put the lid on top, and let it sit.
Meanwhile we cut white cotton into 5 strips (2″ x 12″) that we put into the pot of warm red cabbage water.
She removed one strip after 10 minutes, another after 1 hour, another after 5 hours, another after 11 hours, and the last after 22 hours.
After removing each strip she set it aside to dry on a pile of paper towels on the countertop. The last 2 were a similar tint.
After the strips dried, we pressed each strip, we cut the strips into graduating sizes, the lightest was the longest at 12″, then the next shade up was 10″, then 8″, then 6″, finally 4″.
Then she neatly stacked them on top of each other from darkest to lightest to show the color variant: lightest on the bottom, darkest on top.
My daughter stapled these to some black 12×12 scrapbooking paper, which she labeled. The staple she covered with some purple beads.
Purple Bead Necklace and Murex Shell Crafts
Then she created her own purple bead necklace, as she imagined a Phoenician might have traded.
My son recreated a murex shell with sculpy clay. After he formed the shape and baked it, he painted it to look like a real shell. (He used photos from our research for a guide.)
This was a hugely fun project and topic of study!
Epilogue 2024
Again my kids and I now have a huge reference point for anything involving Phoenicians, dyes, and the color purple, especially in the ancient times, whenever we visit museums. These projects do bring museums to life for us!
