This Lump Found In A Roman Bathhouse Was Once Worth Triple Its Weight In Gold
An ancient discovery shows us vanity creates a value all its own
I have a quick riddle for you. What stinks like a dead fish but was tightly gripped by the powerful? What’s produced free by nature but was once worth triple its weight in gold? What is as common as sand, but at the same time was incredibly rare?
The answer is purple. Well, let me rephrase that: the answer was Tyrian Purple.
At one point in world history, this color was a valuable commodity that cloaked the powerful and fueled a sea-trading empire. But more recently a relic from purple’s grandiose past has been discovered in modern England.
In May 2024, Frank Giecco, the technical director of Wardell Armstrong, announced a “mysterious lump of a soft purple substance was discovered at a Roman Bathhouse, within the grounds of Carlisle Cricket Club.”
The archeological dig known as the “Uncovering Roman Carlisle Project” has been excavating the structure built in the 3rd Century during Emperor Septimius Severus’ reign.
Testing done by the British Geological Society and Newcastle University on the lump concluded the pigment was organic, and it also had bromine and beeswax mixed within. They believe the material is Tyrian purple.
According to Giecco:
“It’s the only example we know of in Northern Europe — possibly the only example of a solid sample of the pigment in the form of unused paint pigment anywhere in the Roman Empire. Examples have been found of it in wall paintings (like in Pompeii) and some high status painted coffins from the Roman province of Egypt.”
While this obviously sounds like an incredible find, it does leave the modern reader with certain questions. Namely, what’s so valuable about purple and why was it so rare?
While Crayola may have spoiled us as children with its cheap palette of endless hues, the ancient world was quite different, especially with purple.
Creating The Royal Color
“To make Tyrian purple, marine snails were collected by the thousands. They were then boiled for days in giant lead vats, producing a terrible odor. The snails, though, aren’t purple to begin with. The craftsmen were harvesting chemical precursors from the snails that, through heat and light, were transformed into the valuable dye. The compounds that turn purple in this process serve a defensive role in the snail — they protect the egg masses from bacterial infection.”
— Casey Dunn, New York Times
The oldest examples of purple dye found come from the city of Tyre in the Bronze Age, situated in present-day Lebanon. This city was founded by the sea-faring people known as the Phoenicians. Some even say the name of these people is derived from Greek words for the color purple.
Christopher J. Cooksey from the Department of Chemistry at University College London claims this dye business was the first chemical industry. Tyrian purple is the oldest and most expensive known pigment. You'll understand the expense when you see the labor involved in producing it.
First, sea snails had to be captured.
In his History Of Animals, Aristotle briefly explains that rotten fish were used as bait to catch the creatures in traps connected to floats. The snails, being predatory creatures, did the rest, moving into the traps themselves.
The secretion generated by these snails could be harvested in one of two ways. It could be milked by agitating the snail, but that could take forever.
The preferable method was to crush the snail and remove the hypobranchial glands, although even this required an extraordinary number of creatures.
Cooksey refers to an experiment by Paul Friedländer in 1909, in which he processed “the hypobranchial glands of 12,000 Murex brandaris,” which only netted him 1.4 grams of pigment.
While the process of creating the dye is often referenced in ancient texts, no one knows the exact man-hours necessary to make a dyed piece of fabric. But one would imagine it was extensive when you combine trapping, cooking, and the dyeing process itself. The prices play this out.
In the World History Encyclopedia, Mark Cartwright references an edict by Roman Emperor Diocletian stating that a pound of Tyrian Purple dye costs 150,000 denarii or 3 pounds of gold. Now, let’s extend that to present-day values.
Currently, gold is roughly $2800 per ounce.
In our world, an equal weight of Tyrian Dye would cost $8400, and the price becomes astronomical if you consider pounds of the material.
Using Friedländer’s calculations, an ounce of Tyrian Dye would require almost 244,000 sea snails.
Frank Giecco never bothered to mention how much that lump found in the Roman bathhouse weighed, but we can assume it was worth a fortune in its time.
This also got me wondering about things we value.
Vanity Costs More Than Gold
It’s easy to understand why gold has value. The metal is rare. Not to mention, it’s very malleable and nearly indestructible. But human vanity can quickly outpace the value of gold, and it’s been proven throughout history.
Renaissance painters were commissioned to create paintings using ultramarine, or the king of all blues. This was made from the precious mineral lapis lazuli, and brought all the way from Afghanistan. There was also a king of red, called cochineal, which involved crushed scales of the Kermes beetle.
One could only imagine the price of a painting done by an elite artist with ultramarine and cochineal hues.
In the 1800s, Napoleon III of France demonstrated his opulence by serving important dignitaries on dishes made of the most precious metal of the time—aluminum. He saved the gold plates for lesser guests.
We have our examples today too.
In 2024, Kanye West got solid titanium dental implants, which supposedly cost $850,000. So much for the quaint golden grills of times past.
With all this in mind, it’s not entirely out of character that a Roman Emperor might have a royal bathhouse painted in purple dye that today would fetch $8400 per ounce and require hundreds of thousands of sea snails.
While gold may be an eternal store of wealth, vanity has a value that can only be calculated by the ego. Therefore, the ego-sanctioned price is priceless if history has anything to say about this.
As for snail-created dyes, they were dealt a death blow in 1850. A young chemist in England named William Perkin, was attempting to synthesize quinine but accidentally created the first synthetic dye, known as aniline purple. The shade lost its vanity-inspiring cost not long after.
-Originally posted on Medium 5/20/24