Definition of "Tyrian"

Still had she gazed; but 'midst the tideTwo angel forms were seen to glide,The Genii of the stream;Their scaly armour's Tyrian hueThro' richest purple to the viewBetrayed a golden gleam.

1747, Thomas Gray, Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes

It was no longer torture-torn and hateful, as I had seen it when she was cursing her dead rival by the leaping flames, no longer icily terrible as in the judgment-hall, no longer rich, and sombre, and splendid, like a Tyrian cloth, as in the dwellings of the dead.

1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887