Astronomy:Solar symbol
A solar symbol is a symbol representing the Sun. Common solar symbols include circles (with or without rays), crosses, and spirals. In religious iconography, personifications of the Sun or solar attributes are often indicated by means of a halo or a radiate crown.
When the systematic study of comparative mythology first became popular in the 19th century, scholarly opinion tended to over-interpret historical myths and iconography in terms of "solar symbolism". This was especially the case with Max Müller and his followers beginning in the 1860s in the context of Indo-European studies.[1] Many "solar symbols" claimed in the 19th century, such as the swastika, triskele, Sun cross, etc. have tended to be interpreted more conservatively in scholarship since the later 20th century.[2]
Solar disk
The basic element of most solar symbols is the circular solar disk.
The disk can be modified in various ways, notably by adding rays (found in the Bronze Age in Egyptian depictions of Aten) or a cross. In the ancient Near East, the solar disk could also be modified by addition of the Uraeus (rearing cobra), and in ancient Mesopotamia it was shown with wings.
Bronze Age writing
Egyptian hieroglyphs have a large inventory of solar symbolism because of the central position of solar deities (Ra, Horus, Aten etc.) in ancient Egyptian religion.
The "Sun" logogram in early Chinese writing, beginning with the oracle bone script (c. 12th century BC) also shows the solar disk with a central dot (analogous to the Egyptian hieroglyph); under the influence of the writing brush, this character evolved into a square shape (modern 日).
Classical era
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In the Greek and European world, until approximately the 16th century, the astrological symbol for the Sun was a disk with a single ray, 
(U+1F71A 🜚 ). This is the form, for example, in Johannes Kamateros' 12th century Compendium of Astrology.[4]
Astronomical symbol
The modern astronomical symbol for the Sun, a circled dot (U+2609 ☉ SUN), was first used in the Renaissance.
Rayed depictions
A circular disk with alternating triangular and wavy rays emanating from it is a frequent symbol or artistic depiction of the sun.
Antiquity
The ancient Mesopotamian "star of Shamash" could be represented with either eight wavy rays, or with four wavy and four triangular rays.
The Vergina Sun (also known as the Star of Vergina, Macedonian Star, or Argead Star) is a rayed solar symbol appearing in ancient Greek art from the 6th to 2nd centuries BC. The Vergina Sun appears in art variously with sixteen, twelve, or eight triangular rays.
Bianchini's planisphere, produced in the 2nd century,[5] has a circlet with rays radiating from it.[6]
Sun with face
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The iconographic tradition of depicting the Sun with rays and with a human face developed in Western tradition in the high medieval period and became widespread in the Renaissance, harking back to the Sun god (Sol/Helios) wearing a radiate crown in classical antiquity.
Sunburst
The sunburst was the badge of king Edward III of England, and has thus become the badge of office of Windsor Herald.
Modern pictogram
The modern pictogram representing the Sun as a circle with rays, often eight in number (indicated by either straight lines or triangles; Unicode Miscellaneous Symbols ☀ U+2600; ☼ U+263C) indicates "clear weather" in weather forecasts, originally in television forecasts in the 1970s.[8] The Unicode 6.0 Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block introduced another set of weather pictograms, including "white sun" without rays 1F323 🌣, as well as "sun with face" U+1F31E 🌞︎︎.
The "sun with rays" pictogram is also used to represent the "high brightness" setting in display devices, encoded separately by Unicode 6.0 U+1F506 🔆 (Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs).
Crosses
The "sun cross", "solar cross", or "wheel cross" (🜨) is often considered to represent the four seasons and the tropical year, and therefore the Sun (though as an astronomical symbol it represented the Earth).[lower-alpha 1] In the prehistoric religion of Bronze Age Europe, crosses in circles appear frequently on artifacts identified as cult items. An example from the Nordic Bronze Age is the "miniature standard" with amber inlay revealing a cross shape when held against the light (National Museum of Denmark).[9] The Bronze Age symbol has also been connected with the spoked chariot wheel, which at the time was four-spoked (compare the Linear B ideogram 243 "wheel" 𐃏). In the context of a culture that celebrated the Sun chariot, the wheel may thus have had a solar connotation (c.f. the Trundholm sun chariot).
The Arevakhach ("solar cross") symbol often found in Armenian memorial stelae is claimed as an ancient Armenian solar symbol of eternity and light.[10]
Some Sámi shaman drums have the Beaivi Sámi sun symbol that resembles a sun cross.
The swastika has been a long-standing symbol of good fortune in Eurasian cultures: its appropriation by the Nazi Party from 1920 to 1945 is a brief moment in its history. It may be derived from the sun cross,[11] and is another solar symbol in some contexts.[12] It is used among Buddhists (manji), Jains, and Hindus; and many other cultures, though not necessarily as a solar symbol.
The "Black Sun" (German: Schwarze Sonne) is a 'sun wheel' with twelve-fold rotational symmetry. The design was incorporated as a mosaic into a floor of Wewelsburg Castle during the Nazi era and may have been inspired by Alemannic Iron Age swastika-like designs in Migration-period Zierscheiben.[13] It has been adopted by modern Satanist groups and neo-Nazis.
The "Kolovrat", or in Polish Słoneczko, represents the Sun in Slavic neopaganism.
Sun cross form of swastika, official symbol of the German Faith Movement (1934–1945)
Slavic Kolovrat/Słoneczko
Modern flags and emblems
Official insignia which incorporate rayed solar symbols include the flag of Uruguay, the flag of Kiribati, some versions of the flag of Argentina, the Irish Defence Forces cap badge, and the 1959–1965 coat of arms of Iraq.
The depictions of the sun on the flags of the Republic of China (Taiwan), Kazakhstan, Kurdistan, the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, and Nepal have only straight (triangular) rays; that of Kyrgyzstan has only curvy rays; while that of the Philippines has short diverging rays grouped into threes.
Another rayed form of the sun has simple radial lines dividing the background into two colors, as in the military flags of Japan and the flag of North Macedonia, and in the top parts of the flags of Tibet and Arizona.
The flag of New Mexico is based on the Zia sun symbol which has four groups of four parallel rays emanating symmetrically from a central circle.
Flag of Argentina
Flag of Arizona (USA)
Flag of the Republic of China (Taiwan)
Flag of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force
Flag of Kazakhstan
Flag of Kiribati
Flag of Kurdistan
Flag of Nepal
Flag of New Mexico (USA)
Flag of North Macedonia
Flag of the Philippines
Flag of Tibet
Flag of Uruguay
Flag of Pernambuco (Brazil)
Code points in Unicode
| Preview | Template:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showchar | Template:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showchar | Template:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showchar | Template:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showchar | Template:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showchar | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | SUN | BLACK SUN WITH RAYS | WHITE SUN WITH RAYS | ALCHEMICAL SYMBOL FOR VERDIGRIS | WHITE SUN | |||||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | decimal | hex | decimal | hex | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
| Unicode | 9737 0 0 0 | U+2609 | 9728 0 0 0 | U+2600 | 9788 0 0 0 | U+263C | 128808 0 0 0 | U+1F728 | 127779 0 0 0 | U+1F323 |
| UTF-8 | 226 152 137 0 0 0 | E2 98 89 00 00 00 | 226 152 128 0 0 0 | E2 98 80 00 00 00 | 226 152 188 0 0 0 | E2 98 BC 00 00 00 | 0 159 156 168 0 0 0 | Template:UTF-8/4 9F 9C A8 00 00 00 | 0 159 140 163 0 0 0 | Template:UTF-8/4 9F 8C A3 00 00 00 |
| UTF-16 | 9737 0 0 0 | 2609 0000 0000 0000 | 9728 0 0 0 | 2600 0000 0000 0000 | 9788 0 0 0 | 263C 0000 0000 0000 | 55357 57128 0 0 0 | D83D DF28 0000 0000 0000 | 55356 57123 0 0 0 | D83C DF23 0000 0000 0000 |
| Numeric character reference | ☉ |
☉ |
☀ |
☀ |
☼ |
☼ |
🜨 |
🜨 |
🌣 |
🌣 |
| Preview | Template:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showchar | Template:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showchar | Template:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showchar | Template:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showchar | Template:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showcharTemplate:Charmap/showchar | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | SUN WITH FACE | HIGH BRIGHTNESS SYMBOL | ALCHEMICAL SYMBOL FOR GOLD | KANGXI RADICAL SUN | SUN WITH URAEUS | |||||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | decimal | hex | decimal | hex | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
| Unicode | 127774 0 0 0 | U+1F31E | 128262 0 0 0 | U+1F506 | 128794 0 0 0 | U+1F71A | 12103 0 0 0 | U+2F47 | 78324 0 0 0 | U+131F4 |
| UTF-8 | 0 159 140 158 0 0 0 | Template:UTF-8/4 9F 8C 9E 00 00 00 | 0 159 148 134 0 0 0 | Template:UTF-8/4 9F 94 86 00 00 00 | 0 159 156 154 0 0 0 | Template:UTF-8/4 9F 9C 9A 00 00 00 | 226 189 135 0 0 0 | E2 BD 87 00 00 00 | 0 147 135 180 0 0 0 | Template:UTF-8/4 93 87 B4 00 00 00 |
| UTF-16 | 55356 57118 0 0 0 | D83C DF1E 0000 0000 0000 | 55357 56582 0 0 0 | D83D DD06 0000 0000 0000 | 55357 57114 0 0 0 | D83D DF1A 0000 0000 0000 | 12103 0 0 0 | 2F47 0000 0000 0000 | 55308 56820 0 0 0 | D80C DDF4 0000 0000 0000 |
| Numeric character reference | 🌞 |
🌞 |
🔆 |
🔆 |
🜚 |
🜚 |
⽇ |
⽇ |
𓇴 |
𓇴 |
U+2299 ⊙ CIRCLED DOT OPERATOR
See also
- Astrological symbols – Symbols denoting astrological concepts
- Astronomical symbols
- Blue Sky with a White Sun – National emblem of the Republic of China
- Beaivi
- Black Sun (symbol)
- Lauburu
- Monad (Greek philosophy)
- Self in Jungian psychology
- Solar deity
- The Sun in culture
- Sun (heraldry) – Symbolic form used in heraldry
- Sun of May – National emblem of Argentina and Uruguay
- Winged sun – Symbol of divinity, royalty and power
Notes
- ↑ Since at least 1988, the International Astronomical Union has deprecated use of planetary symbols in journal articles. The IAU Style Manual. The International Astrophysical Union. 1989. p. 27. https://www.iau.org/static/publications/stylemanual1989.pdf. Retrieved August 20, 2018.
References
- ↑ C. Scott Littleton (1973). The New Comparative Mythology: An Anthropological Assessment of the Theories of Georges Dumézil. University of California Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-520-02404-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=KuSy6xW99agC&pg=PA34.. See also R. F. Littledale, "The Oxford Solar Myth, A Contribution to Comparative Mythology" in: Echoes from Kottabos, London (1906), 279–290 for a satire on this effect.
- ↑ notably ciriticized by Richard Chase, The Quest for Myth (1951); see also Astralkult for the more general tendency of over-interpretation of mythology in terms of astral mythology.
- ↑ Jones, Alexander (1999). Astronomical papyri from Oxyrhynchus. pp. 62–63. ISBN 0-87169-233-3. https://books.google.com/books?id=8MokzymQ43IC.
- ↑ Neugebauer, Otto; Van Hoesen, H. B. (1987). Greek Horoscopes. pp. 1, 159, 163. ISBN 9780871690487. https://archive.org/details/greekhoroscopesm00neug_004.
- ↑ "Bianchini's planisphere". Florence, Italy: Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza (Institute and Museum of the History of Science). http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/galileopalazzostrozzi/object/BianchinisPlanisphere.html.
- ↑ Maunder, A. S. D. (1934). "The origin of the symbols of the planets". The Observatory 57: 238–247. Bibcode: 1934Obs....57..238M.
- ↑ Michon, Solange (1987). "Un moine enlumineur du XIIe siècle : Frère Rufillus de Weissenau". Journal of Swiss Archaeology and Art History. doi:10.5169/seals-168847.
- ↑ Daniel Engber, Who Made That Weather Icon?, New York Times, 23 May 2013.
- ↑ entry at the Nebra sky disk exhibition site (landesmuseum-fuer-vorgeschichte-halle.de)
- ↑ Айк Демоян «Армянские национальные символы» = «Հայկական ազգային խորհրդանշաններ». — Ереван: «Пюник», 2013.
- "Մամլո հաղորդագրություն - "Շուշիի ազատագրման 20-ամյակ" (ոսկի) [News release - A golden coin dedicated o the 20th anniversary of the Liberation of Shushi"]. Central Bank of Armenia. 24 January 2012. https://www.cba.am/AM/pmessagesannouncements/6%20new%20com.%20coins%2024.01.2012.pdf. see the image of the coin
- "Հայաստանի Հանրապետության Կառավարության 2002 Թվականի Հունվարի 7-ի N 6 Որոշման Մեջ Փոփոխություններ Կատարելու Մասին". Armenian Legal Information System. 18 April 2012. http://www.arlis.am/DocumentView.aspx?DocID=82810., see the logo of the Customs Service of Armenia
- The Council of the city Yerevan, the seal of Yerevan, 2010, see the logo of Yerevan
- Ministry of Justice of RA, about the medals and decorations, 2007
- The government of Armenia, symbol of the cooperation «Armenia-Diaspora» , 2012
- Ministry of Emergency Situations, about the medals and decorations, 2011, see the symbol of the cooperation «Armenia-Diaspora»
- Central Bank of Armenia, coin «15-years of liberation of Shushi», 2007, see the image of the coin
- ↑ Koch, Rudolf (1955). The book of signs : which contains all manner of symbols used from the earliest times by primitive peoples and early Christians. Dover. p. 18. ISBN 9780486153902. OCLC 1124412910.
- ↑ Neubecker, Ottfried; Brooke-Little, J P (1976). Heraldry: Sources, Symbols, and Meaning. New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 142. ISBN 9780070463080. OCLC 1089555543.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2002). Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity. New York University Press. p. 3. ISBN 0-81-473124-4.
External links
- Symbols.com list and description of sun symbols (archived 31 October 2010)
- Origins and Meanings of the Eight-point Star. .
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