Crescent Moon: Difference between revisions

Star and cresent symbols have a long history and are first seen in Summerian iconography, representing the moon god Sin with a cresent moon and his daughter the goddess Ishtar with a star (associated with the planet Venus), though the symbols are depicted side by side, usually also with a disk representing her brother, the sun god. The first examples of a star ''within'' a cresent moon symbol are found in ancient Greco-Roman times on coins associated with the city of Byzantium and the goddess Hecate for whom there had long been a cult there. It is also found on Roman and Persian coins of the 1st and 2nd century CE.<ref>[https://coinweek.com/ancient-coins/star-crescent-ancient-coins/ The Star and Crescent on Ancient Coins] by Mike Markowitz, Coinweek.com 2017</ref> Andrea Gariboldi writes that "while in Roman coinage stars and cresent moons can allude to a generic astrological cult, albeit of oriental origin (''Sol'' and ''Luna'' in particular), or to zodiacal motifs, or to the divinations of the emperor (the case of Caesar's star on Augustus' coinage is the most emblematic), ultimately degenerating, especially on bronze coinage of Constantine's era, to simple iconographic motifs which may be used to distinguish the different ''officinae'' of mints, I believe that the depiction of the sun and glimmering stars and of the crescent moon in Iranian coinage has its justification only in the concept of the, historically temporal, βασιλεία [i.e. kingdom] that places the sovereign at the centre of the universe created by God."<ref>Gariboldi, Andrea (2004) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/29757605 Astral Symbology on Iranian Coinage.] East and West, vol. 54, no. 1/4, pp. 31–53</ref> In the same article she details (with images) how the symbol of a star within cresent moon was used at the four cardinal points on the margins of coins under the Sasanian emperor Kawad I in the 6th century CE and was adopted for purposes of continuity in the Arab-Sasanian coins of the early Islamic era. The star and cresent became a symbol of Islam under the Ottomon empire, occasionally depicted on military flags in the 14th century CE (the cresent moon on its own being more common)<ref>Pamela Berger, The Crescent on the Temple: The Dome of the Rock as Image of the Ancient Jewish Sanctuary (2012), pp. 164-165</ref> and is widely thought to have achieved its widespread prominence and ubiquitous usage that we see in the Islamic world today when it became the Ottoman state symbol in the 18th century CE.