Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/466

 426 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. which rises to a height of some eighty feet above the southern harbour, the ddbris left by the dyers may still be seen. This is a bed some hundreds of yards long, and several yards deep, entirely composed of the shells of the murex trunculus. They have all been opened at the same point, apparently by an axe, to get out the dye. 1 It is the same at Sour, where the dyeworks were once so numerous as to spoil the town as a place to live in ; 2 for the flesh of the dead murex exhaled an odour which was not exactly that of " Araby the blest." 3 1 LORTET, La Syrie (faujourdhui, p. 102. These deposits had already been pointed out by M. DE SAULCY (Voyage en Terre Sainte, 1865, vol. ii. pp. 284-286). 2 STRABO, xvi. ii. 23. 3 PLINY, Nat, Hist. ix. 60. LACAZE-DUTHIERS, Memoire, p. 31. MM. LORTET and CHANTRE found deposits of the murex brandaris on the coasts of Attica, and on the island of Salamis. The Phoenicians must in time, as their own fisheries became exhausted, have been driven to establish dye-works and fisheries on other coasts than those of Syria; the necessity for such an expansion may, in fact, have counted for much in the development of their maritime trade.