XERXES I

We are rapidly approaching the end of the alphabet over on the Tag Tuesday blog, can you believe it? We are up to the letter X! My choice for this week's tag was XERXES I, King of Persia ( 519 - 465 BC ). I found a little engraving of Xerxes taking the Jewess Esther for his wife and hand coloured the two main figures. The background is a piece of Old Persian writing called XPa, which is  inscribed in the walls of the Gate of all nations, the main gate to the terrace on which the Persepolis palaces have been built. Because I imagined such a ceremony to be colourful and the clothes to be richly decorated with jewels and metallic threads, I used a couple of tiny pieces from an Indian sari fabric to hint at that -

Tonight's the night, girls! We are off to France for the summer. Wish I could take you with me. Well, in a way I do, of course, because we blog and email and skype. Still, you know..... wish you were there........

Toodlepip xxx