A factory for producing Tyrian purple dye from the 16th century BCE was found on the island of Aegina, adjacent to mainland Greece. The Phoenicians were not at their peak during that time, and it is likely that the factory was not Phoenician but Minoan. It turns out that the original producers of Tyrian purple dye were the Minoans and not the Canaanites. Findings of murex shells and evidence of local dye production have already been found at sites such as Palaikastro in Crete and the island of Kouphonisi. References to the purple dye, or what can be interpreted from the inscription po-pu-re-ia, were found on Linear B tablets from Knossos. The purple color is also dominant in Minoan art items, such as the frescoes from Thera (i.e., Santorini) and the sarcophagi found in Hagia Triada in Crete.
The word “porphyra” or “porphorea” is not of Greek origin but Minoan. At least, that is what Robert Stieglitz argues in his article “The Minoan Origin of Tyrian Purple” (1994), as the earliest mention is found there. Michael Astour (1965) claimed that the word “porphyra” comes from the Canaanite verb “parpar,” meaning “to boil”. In ancient Hebrew, “parur” means “pot” or “cauldron”, as seen in the biblical quote “and they ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and boiled it in a pot” (Number 11:8), and in another quote referring to the utensils in the tabernacle (2 Samuel 14). Thus, he argued, the Greeks borrowed the word from the Phoenicians for the process of making the dye, which involves crushing, boiling, and fermenting the shells of the snails. However, it turns out that the Phoenicians also borrowed the word.
The missing link can be found here: Ephraim Avigdor Speiser (1936) argued that in Hurrian, the term for purple dye was “kinahhu,” and thus the inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean were called in Egyptian documents “Canaanites,” during the period when they had a monopoly on dye production—Canaanites, traders of textiles. The Greeks used the word to describe the purple color “phoenix” (Φοῖνιξ), and thus called them “Phoenicians”. Later, the Romans called them Punics after the Latin word for purple, “Poenus.” It seems that the Greek word originated from Mycenaean Greek, where the color was called “ponikio” 𐀡𐀛𐀑𐀍. Where did the Mycenaeans get it from?
It appears that only after the collapse of Minoan culture, when there was a vacuum in the dye production field, did other peoples from the Mediterranean coasts enter this industry. The Mycenaeans tried to maintain the monopoly the Minoans had when they took over Crete, but failed. Factories were also found in Troy (western Turkey) and Cyprus. But it turns out that the Phoenicians eventually prevailed.
Now for the technical details: During the excavations, evidence of the dye production process was found in the form of ceramic shards, grinding stones, and a waste pit filled with broken murex shells. Additionally, remains of pigs and sheep that were sacrificed were found. Why sacrifice animals in a dye production factory? The purple dye was produced from sea snails, and therefore was directly related to the sea. The ritual sacrifices might indicate a worship of Poseidon, in an attempt to make him protect the factory and bring abundance. Poseidon was considered to cause storms at sea by striking the seabed with his trident, creating large waves that washed snails ashore. Another thing that causes waves and washes snails ashore is the tide, related to the moon’s gravitational force. Although this was discovered by Pytheas in the fourth century BCE, it was probably known earlier. What Pytheas discovered was an exaggerated display of the tides since in areas close to the ocean (not the Mediterranean), the tides are much more extreme—several meters compared to less than a meter on Mediterranean coasts. Pytheas discovered this in Britain.
Poseidon was originally a chthonic god, lord of the underworld. The underworld was then considered a divine place, and people built their temples at its entrances. One such place was the so-called “Cave of Eileithyia” in Amnisos, which was considered the maritime gateway of Knossos in Crete. In the cave, they worshiped a goddess who gave birth once a year to a divine child, and his mother was considered “Our Lady”. The Minoans believed in the mother goddess whom they called Potnia, meaning “the mistress”. Potnia was a fertility goddess, protector of childbirth. Being a goddess of fertility, she is associated with the full and waning moon in cycles and therefore also with .the menstrual cycle. Eileithyia was similarly a protector of childbirth, and was likely “imported” to Crete by the Mycenaeans when they identified their own deities with the Minoan ones. While the Greeks believed in an Olympian pantheon, a worship of sky gods, the Minoans practiced chthonic worship. To identify the goddess of childbirth with Greek deities, they invented the story of Leto, Artemis, and Hera. Hera and Artemis were considered fertility goddesses, with Artemis inheriting the protection of childbirth from Eileithyia after Eileithyia failed to protect Leto in the birth of Artemis. Artemis was also the goddess of the moon at some point.
When Homer sought to describe the fertility goddesses protecting childbirth, he used the term “Potnia Theron” (Ἡ Πότνια Θηρῶν), meaning “Queen of the Animals”. In Exodus, the midwives were considered to “revive” (“vatechayena”, from “chaya” or HIW) the children, and women who gave birth without difficulties were called “animals” (chayot, same root). In the ancient Near East, the mother goddess was called “Mistress of the Animals” for this reason, and figurines of fertile and abundant women seated with animals were considered representations of the mother goddess.
“The mistress” in the ancient language was mainly called so because she was the wife of “the mister”. The “wife” was called so assuming that “husband” was “potis” in archaic Greek. In slightly more modern Greek (Koine), the ‘t’ turned into an ‘s’, thus it became “posis”. This is important because in the Cave of Eileithyia, the role of the goddess’s consort, who was called “the earth-shaker”, is mentioned. The main role of a chthonic god is to cause earthly catastrophes like volcanoes or earthquakes. In Linear B, this is called e-ne-si-da-o-ne, and in Greek, Enesidaon. Together with the word “posis” describing the husband, it can be fused to form Pose-Enesidaon or simply “Poseidon”.
Elsewhere, the father god, the consort of the mother, was called “Anax” Although the ‘a’ evolved from the Greek letter digamma ϝ, the original word was ϝάναξ. Digamma evolved to be the letter W, although in some places it was pronounced like the letter v (hebrew: “vav” or “waw”, letter no. 6), thus the sixth letter in the Latin script is F, as ‘v’ and ‘f’ are interchangeable. The digamma letter is no longer in use in modern Greek, or even in Koine Greek, but only in archaic Greek. Therefore, the original title of the god is not Anax but rather “Fanax”, meaning “king”. His wife, the queen, was called in Minoan language “Wanas” or “Fanas”.
We have reached the stage where we link Poseidon to the Fanax, and Poseidon’s role in bringing the snails to the snails themselves and their purple color. It turns out that Tyrian purple is named after the chthonic underworld god, who eventually became the god of the sea and storms. On this occasion, we should note that in shamanic tradition, caves and especially temple-caves were places where incubation was performed and different states of consciousness were achieved. Poseidon was considered the god of madness, partly because he is associated with horses running amok, and the horses themselves were considered symbols of fertility among Indo-European peoples. Even Potnia was called in the Linear B tablets “Potnia Hippea” (i.e of the horses), a title later borrowed by Athena. Athena or Minerva was associated with the Celtic goddess Sulis, linked to rebirth and altered states of consciousness. When we talk about birth in general, we need to suspect that it also refers to rebirth, so the talks about birth in caves and about Potnia require this interpretation. It is not surprising to discover that in ancient times, Tyrian purple was used to induce altered states of consciousness and create a “visual hiccup in the brain” due to its striking color (17:28 in the next video). Even today, purple is considered a psychedelic color. Jimi Hendrix once called it Purple Haze…
Entheogens and sacred herbs 