This image is inspired by the study of Classical Greek that was part of my Open University Diploma in Classical Studies. During one of the courses there was some information in the Resources folder about the roots of the letters of the Greek alphabet. This led me to do some further reading.

The Phoenicians from the land of the rising sun (the Levant, part of the Fertile Crescent) sailed the Mediterranean. They traded papyrus and a purple dye, which comes from a sea mollusc called murex. This dye was often used to dye the robes of priests and kings, and was sometimes called Tyrian purple. Through this trade, the ancient Greeks became familiar with the Phoenician alphabet and adapted it for their own language, changing the direction of many letters, and adding vowels.

The Latin alphabet which we use today, evolved from the Greek letters and many other Indo-European alphabets have roots in the Phoenician alphabet

The Greek statue is a photo of one of my apparel designs on a dressmaker’s dummy, which I edited with photo editing software so that it looks like an old statue (well, a bit like bas-relief). I created the letters with drawing software and the rest of the image was also created digitally.

References:

The Open University (2003) A396 Continuing Classical Greek, Milton Keynes, The Open University

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple

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