MARRIAGE OF SEA AND SKY
The story of many a god and goddess from the mystical past is synonymous with these waters. Legend has it, for example, that Aphrodite, ancient Greek goddess of love, was born of the Mediterranean foam, a mingling of the sea’s turquoise with earthen yellow. Surely this is why the kings of antiquity always had temples of Aphrodite built near the sea, so that her rites could be performed on the shores of its turquoise waters. Out of love of the land, the sea, that old generator of passions, clasps the forest to its bosom right down to the foot of the pine trees. The hundreds of tiny coves so formed are like a thousand and one kisses planted on the land by the turquoise sea. Like the Mediterranean beckoning to the Aegean, sailboats head for its heart of ‘blue-green’. It’s not for nothing that turquoise in Anatolian mythology is regarded as the marriage of sea and sky.