In August 2007 on a Tunisian beach, Nouira found a shell releasing a purplish red colour, reminding him of something he’d learnt in history class at school. The industry was “under the control of the emperors because it brought a lot of money to the imperial coffers”, he said.
Production of the dye was among the main sources of wealth for the ancient Phoenicians, and then for the Carthaginian and Roman empires, said Ali Drine, who heads the research division of Tunisia’s National Heritage Institute. What happens next is part of a secret guarded so closely that it disappeared hundreds of years ago.Ī symbol of power and prestige, the celebrated purple colour was traditionally used for royal and imperial robes. Now, after years of trial and error –and after getting used to the foul stench –he uses a hammer and small stone mortar to carefully break open the spiny murex shells. “I would crush the whole shell and try to understand how this small marine animal released such a precious colour.” “At the beginning, I didn’t know where to start,“ said Mohamed Ghassen Nouira, who heads a consulting firm. 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.
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