Geographical Distribution of the Shell-Purple Industry. 9 



Cleopatra at the battle of Actium, distinguished from the 

 rest of the fleet by having purple sails a distinction which 

 is said to have been at that time the peculiar privilege of 

 the admiral's vessel." 



THE CENTRES OF PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION 

 OF THE PURPLE INDUSTRY. 



The Phoenicians have been accredited with the inven- 

 tion of this famous purple as well as with that of glass, but 

 modern investigators are depriving these ' maritime pedlars' 

 of much of their former prestige. Glass has been shown 

 to have been first made by the Karly Egyptians many 

 centuries before the probable date of the Phoenician occu- 

 pation of the Mediterranean coast, and the credit of the 

 invention of shell-purple has now been transferred to the 

 Minoans of Crete. R. C. Bosanquet, in his note on " An 

 Karly Purple-fishery"- 1 tells us that " Leuke, the ' White 

 Isle' (modern Kouphonisi), off the south-east coast of 

 Crete, was an important fishing-station in antiquity. The 

 tithes levied on the catch of fish and of purple-shell men- 

 tioned in an inscription of about 350 B.C., must have 

 been very profitable, for the possession of the island was 

 the subject of a long and bitter dispute among three neigh- 

 bouring cities." 



This island was explored in 1903 by C. T. Currelly 

 and R. C. Bosanquet, and " among sand-hills on the north 

 shore they found a bank of shells, some whole but mostly 

 crushed, of Murex trunculus, which is known to have been 

 used in the manufacture of the purple dye." 



4< Scattered through the heap were fragments of 

 pottery, and of a stratile bowl which marked it as not 

 only prae-Hellenic but prae- Phoenician. Further digging 



" J. Napier, ' Manufacturing Arts in Ancient Times,'' 1874, pp. 287-^8. 

 '-' ' ttr it. Ass. Kept., 1903, p. 817. 



