With the massive amount of brands present in the market and the abundance of products offered, identifying a brand has become increasingly difficult. Developing a trademark is now an absolute necessity: a brand must multiply the signals which set its message apart from everyone else.This book will analyse and help conceive the identification codes a brand will use on all its communication grounds - logos, signage and packaging - without forgetting marketing and merchandising strategies.

This study explores the iconographical and functional filiation between the Near-Eastern kerub and the Cypriot and Greek sphinxes. In biblical texts as well as in Near Eastern iconography, the sphinx guarded the Tree of Life, a metaphor for the Afterlife. The tutelary deity - most often a goddess, except in the kingdom of Judah - guaranteed survival in the afterlife, especially to the (God-)King. This was also the case in Cyprus, where contextual analysis shows that the Great Goddess played a similar role with regards to local dynasties. In both cases, the sphinx assisted the deity, and ensured passage toward the Tree of Life - or, in certain cases, denied access to it. Beginning with the well-known scene on the Vatican cup, analysis of the different forms taken by the creature in Greece (where it acquired the name sphinx) shows that it had the same function. This was so both in vase painting, where it appeared most often in the heraldic position, and in statuary, as the upper part of funerary steles or seated on top of columns. In the latter cases, the volutes or palmettes placed immeditately below were a synecdoche (pars pro toto) for the Tree of Life. The same conclusion can be drawn from the Oedipean scenes (one or several men facing the sphinx). Often found in funerary contexts, these representations actually had an eschatological meaning. Evidence shows that these beliefs were transmitted from the Near East (including Egypt) to the Aegean, where they were particularly introduced in Orphic and Dionysian contexts.

Three theories vie to explain the causes, characteristics and chronology behind the emergence of Iron Age Cypriot city-kingdoms: Achaean, Phoenician and autochthonous. Privileged by scholars until as recently as the 1980s, the first linked the emergence of the Cypriot city-state to the great Achaean migrations at the end of the second millennium. Epic foundation myths, telling of cities founded by Achaean heroes returning from Troy, were seen as fabled versions of events unfolding ostensibly at the outset of the Iron Age. The writings of D.W. Rupp cast doubt on the Achaean theory, by placing these developments at a much later date (8th c. BCE) and tracing their origins to the growing influence of the Phoenicians. This hypothesis was hotly contested, giving rise to a third theory, according to which the Cypriot Iron Age was essentially a continuation of the island's Bronze Age civilisation. The latter theory now holds sway and is scarcely ever contested. The Cypriot city-kingdoms that we observe in the historical period (7th-4th c. BCE) are said to have arisen, after a few decades of instability, as early as the 11th century. Their political and administrative structures would have undergone little more than consolidation in the 8th century, before enjoying their floruit during the Archaic and Classical periods and finally disappearing amid the Wars of the Diadochi at the start of the Hellenistic period. By recasting these developments within the broader context of the re-emergence of state structures in the eastern Mediterranean, La naissance des cites-royaumes cypriotes reassesses the arguments advanced by champions of the received theory. It likewise situates the phenomenon within a firmer theoretical (i.e. anthropological) framework, intended to establish well-defined distinctions. Furthermore, it proposes a shared typology that can accommodate other political entities, traces of which are found throughout the Geometric period (11th-8th c. BCE). Not only does the archaeological evidence compel us to question whether events unfolded as suggested, it reinforces a more nuanced variant of the Phoenician theory. Various state markers, though abundant in the 8th century (Cypro-Geometric III), seem indeed conspicuously absent during Cypro-Geometric I and II. Excavations at one such city-state, the palace of Amathus, have yielded compelling indications as to when a lasting dynasty originally arose. From them, we can surmise that the Kingdom of Amathus was the first of its kind. While the process no doubt took several decades, under no circumstances did it occur before the 9th century BCE. This coincides, moreover, with the wave of resurgent state-building that swept the eastern Mediterranean and engulfed even more westerly regions like the Aegean.