The murex snail formed the foundation of Roman Phoenicia's most famous and lucrative industry: the production of Tyrian purple dye. Dating to the second millennium BCE, the industry continued to thrive and produced one of the Roman Empire's most prestigious luxury goods. The labor-intensive and notoriously foul smelling production process required thousands of murex shellfish to be collected, crushed, and processed to extract tiny hypobranchial glands containing the dye precursor, which was then oxidized to produce the rich purple color. Massive shell middens along the Phoenician coastline near Tyre, Sidon, and other cities, some reaching several meters high, testify to centuries of intensive harvesting!