Tyrian Purple 貝紫染

--from the Peony Archives

What should have been one of the greatest homecomings in ancient times, instead ended in cold-blooded murder when the King's wife stabbed him to death that evening in the bath.

How did it come to that? You ask.

Even Odysseus-- the reluctant hero-- finally in the end made it safely home to his loving wife and son, didn't he? 

And, hadn't the Greeks won the war after their rightful sack of Troy? 

Why did she do it?

The chorus, too, demands an answer.

And, so in a series of stunning speeches, which would be the envy of any Washington speech writer, the queen lays out her case. Her husband-- the King-- has killed their beloved daughter, and for that he must die. That he had brought a concubine home with him from Troy and that she and her lover were already happily ruling the Kingdom ensconced in the castle were reasons as well. But Clytemnestra-- make no doubt about it-- is clear about her reasons: he killed their daughter and for that he must die.

So, she sets him up.

In what is one of the most famous homecoming scenes in all history-- Clytemnestra gives her husband Agamemnon the "red carpet treatment."

Laying out the family's priceless reddish-purple color tapestries, she urges him:

"Walk across, my Lord."

He tells her he will not. For that is the kind of arrogance that Persian Kings show-- believing themselves to be as all-mighty as the gods.

"We are democrats," he responds.

And when she continues begging him to glide across the sea of blood-red tapestries, he retorts:

"These are heirlooms, how can we soil our family heirlooms?"

In the end, exhausted perhaps from the trip, he allows himself to be persuaded and across he walks-- to his death. For this show of arrogance is the all-important piece of evidence that Clytemnestra will need as "reason" of the need she had to get rid of him; for most Athenians would have agreed that an all-powerful monarch in the style seen in Persia was something to be avoided at all costs.

In the translator's introduction, it is stated that "puffed up with ego, Agamemnon walks across the tapestries." (many of you will be more familiar with the translator's brother from his Chongqing days)

Dreyfus, though, is upset-- and it's worse than Heidegger's translator.

"Is Lattimore totally oblivious?" Asks Dreyfus, "Where did Agamemnon show any indication of being puffed up? Didn't he try in vain to argue with his wife till he just became exhausted and walked across to please her?"

Dreyfus has a point.

Judge for yourself:

AGAMEMNON
  Daughter of Leda, guardian of my home,
  your speech was, like my absence, far too long.
  Praise that's due to us should come from others.
  Then it's worthwhile. All those things you said—
  don't puff me up with such female honours,    
  or grovel there before me babbling tributes,
  like some barbarian. Don't invite envy    
  to cross my path by strewing it with cloth.
  That's how we honour gods, not human beings.
  For a mortal man to place his foot like this
  on rich embroidery is, in my view,
  not without some risk. So I'm telling you  
  honour me as a man, not as a god.
  My fame proclaims itself.  It doesn't need
  foot mats made out of such embroideries.   
  Not even to think of doing something bad
  is god's greatest gift. When a man's life ends
  in great prosperity, only then can we declare
  that he's a happy man. Thus, if I act,
  in every circumstance, as I ought to now,
  there's nothing I need fear.      

They debated back and forth. In the end, though, the King gave up and treaded upon the "sea of blood." Scholars continue to argue about exactly why he did finally acquiesce and walk across the tapestries.

But what of "these red tapestries dyed in the sea?"

In the translation above, the English word "cloth" is used, and that is probably a safe translation. I think Lattimore uses the word "carpet" but that doesn't quite seem right, does it? For carpets are made to be walked across. Even the heirloom rugs which one finds hanging in a millionaire's yurt could also probably be walked on without causing too much damage. Dreyfus, I think, prefers calling them tapestries, and that works, I think.

The walls of medieval castles were covered in tapestries of fantastic quality-- in fact, I think I read somewhere that tapestries were among the most costly heirlooms of Medieval Europe.

I have also seen the above translated as robes-- which is perhaps my personal favorite translation. The other day, I was having tea with a friend who had taken out several of her beautiful kimono to air them in the dry autumn weather. Silk brocades with golden threads were only to be out done by the most exquisite embroidery on the thinnest, most delicate silk I have ever seen. It was a splendid fortune in textiles, amassed by a woman who in her youth had been very successful in Osaka's water trade.

Dreyfus says, "It would have been like as if Clytemnestra had taken a dozen Monet paintings down from the walls, and laying them down, had said: Walk across my Lord." Textiles more costly than the finest oil paintings....

My tea teacher as well had warned me to never waste money on jewelry if you can buy textiles.

In the ancient world-- almost no matter where you look-- people who could, spent vast amounts of money on such textiles. And, before the invention of money, cloth formed a large bulk of things which were traded across borders. Indeed, it was the silk trade which was to give its name to the most legendary overland trade routes in history!

Agamemnon's robes were most probably woven from wool. The Persians were known for their exquisite dyed cloth in this material. Still, textile scholars remind us that the silk trade, while it took off in Han or Roman Empire times, actually goes back much further. In 1983 the New York Times ran an article about strips of woven silk found on an Egyptian mummy from 1000BC. Scientific studies showed this silk to be Chinese. Silk was also found in 7th century BC graves in Germany and 5th century BC graves in Greece. This latter date corresponding to Aeschylus' play.

It is not outside the realm of possibility that Agememnon's robes or tapestries were made of woven silk.

II.

More than the material, however, it is their color which intrigues. Many will know that these robes, "the blood red color of the sea," were dyed from the pigments gotten from mollusks-- thousands upon of sea creatures. This was the "purple" dyed linen of the Arc of the Covenant that was later to be the color of the robes of the greatest Roman emperors and the color of Cleopatra's "fragrant sails." Indeed, Cleopatra was said to have dwelled within a world of fragrant incense and a cloud of costly purple.

The color purple has long been associated with emperors and queens. While we say "purple" the term actually encompassed a large spectrum of colors from light pink to very dark fuchsia-- with the most sought after color being a shimmering dark red (sometimes referred to as the color of blood). The most refined-- and therefore the most sought after--  shade was this precise shimmering shade of blood, in fact.

The Phoenicians built their fortunes on trade in the dye-- and indeed, the color is known to us today as Tyrian purple. Based on the coast of Lebanon, the ancient mariners of the Mediterranean delivered cloth dyed in this purple of the sea throughout the ancient world. They say it would take 10,000 dead mollusks to dye one robe the coveted color. 

It was smelly business too-- as dying inevitably is. But so lucrative was it that many peoples gave it a shot. No one, however, achieved as beautiful a shade of purple as the Phoenicians (who are believed to have used two species of mollusks: —the Purpura pelagia or Murex trunculus, and the Purfura lapillus or Buccinum lapillus). 

Victoria Finlay tries to track down the color in her book, Color: A Natural History of the Palette, and it is really the only failed adventure in the book. The species have been hunted to the point of extinction and while she did get a glimpse of the huge ancient vats that were once used to make the luxerious dyes (wisely located downwind of the ancient city of Tyre), she is unable to find much of anything else in Lebanon and so travels to the New World where the Central American Indians continue to dye cloth in a similar color gotten from mollusks of a different species. (See this Post for more about her travels into Blue).

I would love to see cloth dyed this color. I cannot even really imagine what murax silk would have looked like, but it is something I would very much like to see.

III.

Anyway, the Phonecians and their trading...I have been thinking a lot lately about the silk road. In particular, I am-- as many here will know-- interested in the way the silk road is held up today as a symbol of something worth emulating for today's times.

For example, we see scholars in Europe (UNESCO scholars) discussing silk road exchanges as "two way streets" where, perhaps in contrast to monoculturalization or super-power monologues of today, silk road influence worked more like a true dialog. (And, how much of this is being romanticized is not really the point as the interesting thing is not the historical accuracy, but rather what contemporary phenomenon it is being contrasted with)

In history books as well, there is a stress on the manner in which trade led the way for these exchanges. And, sometimes when I read, while I feel that there is an implied contrast at how things occur in today's world, I am left with questions.

Aren't international exchanges even today based on trade? Or has the financial world changed to such an extent that two-way trade doesn't really exist any longer?

But, we know that huge trade imbalances existed during Roman times. Pliny (I seem to recall) took pains to complain about Roman trade deficits with India. Purple silk was banned in part for this reason in ancient Rome (being reserved for the emperor). But, if it is not contemporary trade imbalances, what then is being implied?

Last month, Sam Crane had a post over at his place called Finance is Immoral. He says:

Decades ago, "finance" was generally understood as financing something other than finance itself; that is, stocks and bonds and money were tied to the production and circulation of goods and services, which were for the most part tangible, or "real" in economic parlance.  Beginning with at least the oil crisis of the 1970s, finance has been transformed, now stunningly overshadowing the "real" economy.   Left academics have coined the term "Financialization" to get at these changes.  How big has finance become?  That is a difficult question but think about this kind of statement (from the above linked Wikipedia page):

Thus, [in 2006] derivatives trading – mostly futures contracts on interest rates, foreign currencies, Treasury bonds, etc had reached a level of $1,200 trillion, $1.2 quadrillion, a year. By comparison, U.S. GDP in 2006 was $12.456 trillion.

Indeed, this week "trillion" has become a common reference.  How big is the market in credit default swaps?  We hear reports in the tens of trillions.  Government action valued in the hundreds of billions seems puny by comparison.  Welcome to the world of financialization.

Sam asks, what would Mencius think? I think it's a good question.

The Philosophers Zone had another very good show, by the way, on Bailouts, Capitalism and the Financial Markets. Raghuram Rajan, who brings up some of the same points as Sam, had some really interesting things to say, I think.

So, these topics remain on my mind, and I still am not exactly sure how to approach them:
silk road trade versus contemporaray finance
silk road cosmopolitanism versus contemporary globalization
silk road international relations versus the Great Game

**

I am going to re-visit my post (and Sam's comment) on Andre Gunder Frank's book The Centrality of Central Asia. The The Centrality of Central Asia (1992)/ Frank's website.

Checking in at the provincial warlord's homestead, I see someone left a comment here concerning the warlord's preposterous idea that the Tang dynasty is China's #4 most impressive dynasty. I can only say it again: he must be delusional (as clearly the Tang must be either #1 or --if I calculate my beloved's feelings into the calculation-- then, fine, #2) In any case, the comment had some interesting things to say about trade and is recommended reading. Whoever wrote it seems to have similar spelling issues that I have, so at first I wondered if I did in fact write the comment-- but reading it, I realized, no it wasn't me.

**

And, finally sending a kiss:

Comments

[Porphyrius]

That is the second time today I have seen the word 'yurt'.

Murex can still be seen in the rubrics of ancient manuscripts, and most impressively (for I think it is murex), in the Codex Argenteus, whose pages are as beautiful as its contents are fascinating.

Another really good colour book (did I mention it already?) is John Gage's Colour and Culture (1993). He quotes Philostratus on purple: "though it seems to be dark, it gains a peculiar beauty from the sun, and is infused with the brilliancy of the sun's warmth". Compare this with the passage on purple in John Ruskin's lovely "Queen of the Air":

"As far as I can trace the color perception of the Greeks, I find it all founded primarily on the degree of connection between color and light; the most important fact to them in the color of red being its connection with fire and sunshine; so that "purple" is, in its original sense, "fire-color," and the scarlet or orange, of dawn, more than any other fire-color. I was long puzzled by Homer's calling the sea purple; and misled into thinking he meant the color of cloud shadows on green sea; whereas he really means the gleaming blaze of the waves under wide light."

Gage also notes that in the Middle Ages, colour names became transferred to materials, so that 'purpura' (purple) came to mean not purple but---silk! One could therefore have white or green purpura.

More on another post tomorrow.

[Averroes]

Clad in purple and always wise, thank you, Porphyrius, for that wonderful response. I have maybe three times now, put the Cage book in my amazon shopping basket-- only to take it out again. It costs a pretty penny, you see. This time, though, I have been tempted beyond turning back! (the story of my life..)

The Codex Argenteus is superb. Unfortunately, every website I access shows a different color altogether. I would love to see what color it appears to the naked eye! Have you ever seen murex dyed parchment or textiles? How would you describe the shade?

Homer's purple sea has puzzled many, it seems. I had thought it was speaking of the shimmering quality of the waves...Anyway, you have given me much to think about-- and I thank you for that!

[Porphyrius]

I have seen some murex rubrics in the flesh--not whole parchments though, and neither, sadly, the Codex, which is bunged up in Uppsala--and the colour varies with times and degradation; though it is impossible to describe a shade, really!

[Averroes]

If anyone could describe a shade, I bet it would be you.

[Onkel Bob]

May I ask why the image of Justinian in San Vitale? If you want a better image of a "ruler" wearing the purple, the better selection would have been the Christ figure in the apse decoration of the same church. I was expecting the observation that around the time of Justinian the Byzantines acquired silkworms of their own and so broke the stranglehold on silk.
You are correct that tapestries were the most expensive item in the medieval repertoire. It was a game between the rulers of the time to see who could spend the most money. Global Interests by Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton is a good discussion on the topic.
Finally, the Chinese ambassador Wei-Lue pointed out the Romans indeed had a great deal of products to trade - sell to the Chinese. His list was comprehensive listing over 100 products that were available in Rome. The problem was that the trade routes needed to go over many lands and pass through many hands. Think about it, silk goes by boat or barge from Guangzhou to Xian. From ther it's by cart to Turfan. Then it must be carried by Bactrian camel across the Taklamakan to Kashgar. Crossing the Pamirs was done by donkey or perhaps mule. Then in Samarkand the load is transferred once more to Bactrian camels. Crossing Parthia could have been done by cart but donkeys were required to cross the Zagros. Finally dromedaries were needed to cross the Syrian Desert to reach Palmyra. By the time the stuff reached Roman outposts, many others had "first dibs." Furthermore, there were few merchants that made the trip end to end, instead relying on a relay system.
Lopez had a great discussion about Islamic trade and the introduction of "Letters of Credit" (Suftjah?) which revolutionized trade during the Abassid dynasty. Instead of bringing gold, the merchant brought a letter that allowed him to draw on the account of a distant ruler. Understand that merchants were de facto ambassadors, bankers, and agents of the state.
One last picture reference from Ravenna, this time from San Apollinare. These guys wear the purple and bring gifts. I think the best part is the date trees in the background. Not something one expects from artists working in N. Italy.

[Peony]

Hi Bob,

Thank you for stopping by-- and thank you for your great comment! Why the mosaic at Ravenna? Well, I wanted to make absolutely sure that the image I used was of Tyrian Purple (because there were other purples) and that is a famous example... It's so hard to really get a grasp on the colors via the computer too because the examples you sent seemed too dark for the shade I was trying to think about... what do you think? But then look at how dark the same figure from Ravenna looks here

I would very much like to see cloth or parchment dyed in Tyrian purple with my own eyes someday... When and where?

Regarding the Byzantines-- I'm really looking forward to reading the History of Silk written by Philippa Scott (I linked to her article)... but (off the cuff) I thought the Byzantines didn't really get into the silk business till much, much later (that is, their silks really did not come to rival the Chinese ones till almost medieval times).

Your comment about the merchants-- merchants as bankers, ambassadors and also as transmitters of culture (music, religion, art etc) is perhaps what really fascinates me-- and maybe my main question is, how is that different from today?

Thank you so much for the book recommendation, by the way-- the book has one of my favorite paintings on the cover (Bellini). It is about a much later time period than I was thinking or talking about but I definitely want to read it! Even more though-- thank you very much for sending links to the mosaics... there are very beautiful: one mosaic has the description that the figure is wearing one of the costliest textiles ever made-- must be our purple huh?

I look forward to poking around your blog too! Can I ask how you found my blog (which is not registered with the search engines)...

And for a future conversation here and here

Of course, we need to utilize our electronic media as effectively as possible, at the same time though-- depending on a person's aim, sometimes the media itself (because it focuses certain things) might not be as appropriate to the task at hand-- which is to say that it's always, I think, a good idea when it comes to new technologies to embrace them after taking a minute to think about them... The Chronicle link didn't work-- could you send it? I'd like to read what the good professor had to say!

[van door]

One of the 'wonders' and local aspects of trade along the Silk, Tea, Salt and Musk routes was how the idea was cut into particular segments. Local runners, muleteers, traders did consecutive runs only to return and repeat the trip with commodities again and again. By specializing in a particular geographical or linguistic area 'mini' economies and trade societies were formed with relationships benefiting. Payment, at least along the Tea Horse Road and Salt routes, was often made not with any currency but rather with the commodity of choice. Fifty kilograms of tea would get an average horse...one hundred and twenty got a quality animal...

If one had 'goods' to trade, one had a wealth.

Along both the Tea Horse and Salt Roads (which merged into the Silk Road) payments of tea, salt, skins were not uncommon and these then could be 'traded up'; used as currencies to barter.

Whether traveling, bartering or paying tithes to frontier tribes, there was greed yes, but always a human touch. By necessity in the remote areas, negotiating crossings through nomadic lands required a 'sit down, tea, meal'...or a battle to settle. With such encounters this element of the 'face to face' however limited still existed. Risks and benefits were not hidden elements.

Trade then was a far more tangible thing. While the idea of credit existed the elements were far simpler, and perhaps more importantly far more linked to 'people'.

For thirteen centuries the two main strands of Tea Horse Road (almost 6000 km) hummed along with little in the way of interruption. This in itself points to a success of the many 'local' strands...and by extension the many local relationships.

Incidentally, debt within many of the frontier tribes like the Tibetans nomads of Kham, the Blacked Boned Yi, and the Mongolians was often a huge question of honor...as well as fear for life. Again, trade as a tangible, trade as something intensely intertwined with people. Trading 'companies' like the Pomdatsang, Samdutsang, or Andutsang interestingly left the smaller trade companies alone. They didn't 'absorb', terrify or simply wipe them out. By allowing for this scope of trade and respect, trade (and culture) flourished.

Now for a cup of tea....

[Peony in a teacup]

Hi Van,

Thank you so much for this very interesting comment! In one sense your amazing trip across those mountains was not just a trip through geographical space but also a trip in time... Not surprisingly, you really illuminated so many of the issues I have been thinking and wondering about....

Without a doubt, "goods" are no longer as central to trade as market share and quarterly showings (or worse the "financialization" talked about by Sam Crane in his post linked above) And this shift does-- as you suggest-- I think remove the human aspect of trade in almost every way. As you know, I am reading Janet Rizvi's Trans-Himalayan Caravans, Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders in Ladakh right now, and she makes a similar point to how central the idea of trade is to humankind. That as soon as human beings organize into larger groups, they begin immediately and naturally to trade with other groups creating a kind of two-way interconnection.

And as long as the local mini-economies were not tampered with, many of these "trade relationships" lasted hundreds and hundreds of years (for example, certain tyes of trade between Leh and Lhasa or Leh and Yarkand). And, that it has been the trading of goods that leads to two-way interdependence between peoples.

I have written in these pages before that I am doing more and more corporate translations by Japanese executives seeking to get beyond US-style models of capitalism (speaking of a need to get beyond the bottom line of quarterly profits to something with a more long-term value; saying, there's more than one way to practice capitalist economics.). And, of course,business here in Japan still demands courtesy calls and face-to-face meetings. Most high-earning Japan-based translators I know, for example, make sure they pay in-person courtesy calls to the companies-- where they drink tea probably. I use my website with photographs in a similar way to create trust through a "human aspect." And often send gifts of tea for the yearly O-Seibo and O-Chugen seasonal gifts

**
My intuition is (and sadly my bank account balance will prove without a shodow of a doubt) that it is my opinion that most of the most interesting and significant things in life are not only inefficient but that they go dead against strict economic efficiency. I remain committed--alas-- to being inefficient (though I endeavor to be organized!!)

.... And, in this way, I do appreciate Japanese attempts to try and keep a longer-term outlook (and yes, I suppose someone could counter that real people suffer if economic efficiency is not kept since companies will lay off workers in japan). It's all a matter of achieving balance (and I would argue, sometimes an overly near-sighted vision can lead to huge miscalculations along the path) I have heard that in France the government regulates the number of supermarkets allowed to go into a given neighborhood in order to help keep local food sellers in business. I don't know if that's true or not. But when a large conglomerate chain "megastore" went into our town, the shops in neighbors as far away as the other side of town all folded like a card game.

**
Last week, I was working on something about the Qinghai Route (north of your route?) which was a much more important trade route between China and India than scholars earlier thought. Tibetan nomads controlled the route like the Sogdians controlled the silk road. And there were cases were the Tubo nomads served as diplomatic intermediaries in times of dispute (for example helping to sort out diplomatic issues between a Central Asian nation and China). This too, I think, has a different emphasis: trade-based diplomacy versus strategy-based trade? I cannot really state anything with any authority really, as these are just plum-wine induced musings or questions really...

**

Have you ever read Richard Foltz's Religions
of the Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Exchange from Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century ? It is a really, really interesting book.

And I guess this is another place I sense a difference, the way cultural dialogues might or might not have been different in more simpler, "goods" based trade. I tried to explore the ideas once before through Eiji Hattori's book This Post

Here is a quote from my post about Hattori's "silk road cosmopolitanism":

*Travellers went searching, not selling (their object was precious goods,
even ideas)
*They knew sharing not monopoly
*Trade was an international accomplishment achieved by people from many nations; it was not done by one nation alone.

Traffic on the Silk Road, says Hattori (in the spirit of UNESCO), was two-way traffic. This is perhaps his main point (or rather his main lament). No one economic system nor historical perspective reigned categorically supreme above all the rest during the Tang dynasty. And, people interacted with each other from the framework of their own various cultures. This is the famous cosmopolitanism of the Tang. And when you think that what was arguably the greatest of all empires of the time, the Tang actually built mosques and churches in their capital city to welcome the many traders who came from afar-- well, it cannot help but impress. A mosque already stood in Canton during the Prophet's lifetime.

And while it is next to impossible imagining President Bush playing the sitar, in fact, at the court in Chang'an, being proficient at the Kuchean drum became "de rigueur among emperors and noblemen," and of the 30,000 (!) musicians housed within the walls of the imperial palace, a great majority of them were from foreign countries, such as Persia, Kucha and India. The emperors' advisors of the time were composed of various nationalities as well. And, this great internationalism was as evident in Baghdad as it was at Chang'an.

All along the silk roads, countries, kingdoms and empires sought to build ties with each other through diplomatic missions, gifts and international marriage. When I think about that, I cannot come up with one world leader of a powerful country today with a foreign spouse. In today's world a foreign spouse would most probably be a grave liability. I wonder why that is? Hattori also holds up the caravan-sarai as another example of the Tang period "living together" of different cultures. The lords of all silk road cities erected inns where traders and travelers could stay for up to 3 days free of charge. The passing of the caravan, brought riches and wisdom and was something which most leaders hoped to support.

Hattori again and again brings up colonialism as the opposite of the kind of dialog he idealizes-- for colonialism only brought one-way conversation. And this one-way conversation is still wrecking havoc in our post-colonialist world where one still does not see much of a spirit of "learning, giving and sharing" as equal partners in our multi-cultural conversations.