From Bull-and-Butterfly to alpha and psi

Adrian Poruciuc (Romania)

Abstract
The Old European symbols of bull and butterfly, which often occurred together (as Marija Gimbutas pointed out), are now well-known to specialists in archaeomythology. Also, the gradual stylization of an archaic bull-pictogram into the sign that was to become the alpha of the Greek alphabet has been thoroughly discussed. This author hypothesizes that a similar process took place in the case of an Old European butterfly-pictogram, which grew into an Aegean ideogram that has been interpreted as the “double-axe.” That ideogram can have something to do with the “invention” of the Greek phonogram psi, which has no Phoenician antecedent. Such an assumption is based not only on the shape of the letter under discussion, but also on the fact that psi opens the written form of Greek psyche, a word that meant not only ‘soul’ but also ‘butterfly’.