A “mysterious lump” of purple material was recently discovered while digging at a Roman site in the UK. It turned out that the curiously colored substance was an extremely rare chunk of Tyrian purple, a dye that was once worth more than its weight in gold.
The discovery was made in 2023 on the grounds of Carlisle Cricket Club in the north of England while archeologists were excavating a monumental building with a bathhouse built in the third century CE under the reign of Emperor Septimius Severus.
In the drains of the ancient structure, the researchers unearthed an unusually soft chunk of material with a distinctive purple hue. They sent the object to scientists at Newcastle University who concluded that the organic pigment contained Bromine and beeswax – a sure sign it was Tyrian purple.
Today, dyes are cheap and easy to make in a lab. In antiquity, however, they required a huge amount of effort and expertise to make. Purple – a relatively rare color in nature – was made into a dye by crushing thousands of sea snails caught in the Mediterranean Sea.
To make enough Tyrian purple to dye a garment or stain a decorative item would require tens of thousands of snails and a significant amount of elbow grease. As such, it was extremely pricey and became widely associated with royalty, riches, and Roman emperors.
While many relics of Tyrian purple have been found around the Mediterranean, it’s incredibly rare to find the material in the UK in what was the northernmost stretch of the Roman Empire.
“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,” Frank Giecco, Technical Director at Wardell Armstrong, said in a statement.
Septimius Severus – a Roman politician who served as emperor from 193 to 211 CE – was born in present-day Libya and is known to have traveled to the Roman province of Britannia in 208 CE with the aim of strengthening Hadrian’s Wall, the 117-kilometer (73-mile) long fortification that marked the north-west frontier of the Roman Empire.
It is strongly suspected that this lump of Tyrian purple found in Carlisle, a short journey from Hadrian’s Wall, had something to do with this historic visit.
“For millennia, Tyrian Purple was the world’s most expensive and sought-after color. Its presence in Carlisle combined with other evidence from the excavation all strengthens the hypothesis that the building was in some way associated with the Imperial Court of the Emperor Septimius Severus which was located in York and possibly relates to an Imperial visit to Carlisle,” explained Giecco.
Source Link: Rare "Mysterious Lump" Of Purple, Once Worth More Than Gold, Found In Roman Drain
