“This hobby started when I was a boy in history class studying the Canaanites, the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians and how they were famous for extracting purple from murex and it was more expensive than gold,” Nouira said. So expensive was the colour even in ancient times that the Romans restricted its use to the elite, whose purple fringed robes became the mark of the Mediterranean’s most powerful dynasty.įor the ancient Phoenicians, from modern-day Lebanon, the trade in Tyrian purple helped build a mercantile empire that established new colonies across the Mediterranean, including at Carthage, near modern Tunis, under the mythical Queen Dido. Mouhamad Ghassen Nouira works from a hut in his garden to process murex snails using techniques first developed by the Phoenicians to produce a dye known as Tyrian purple that sells online for about $2,500 a gram. TUNIS – A Tunisian history enthusiast is making dye from sea snail shells inspired by a school project decades ago on ancient Carthage and the purple colouring that brought fabulous wealth to the classical world.
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