Beith El - Defaced Star of David

This photo was taken by Dr. Asher Eder about 40 years ago in the ruins of an Herodian building in Beth-El, north of Ramallah. There, it had a curvilinear shape. When Dr. Eder wanted, a few years latter, to take a better photo he found out that the Star of David was defaced. Any how I heard from my teacher, Dr. Ze'ev Goldmann, who is an expert on religious symbols, that this is not a Star of David. It is an ancient Jewish symbol called tri-loop.

The following paragraph is from Dr. Asher Eder’s book The Star of David, which was published in 1987 in English in Jerusalem by Rubin Mass Ltd. The publication here is courtesy of Oren Mass

From the First Century B.C.E. on, we find [the hexagram] in the Land of Israel on many archeological sites.

Dating back to the second or third decade B.C.E., it could have be seen engraved on the ruins of an Herodian building in Beth-El, north of Ramallah. There, it had a curvilinear shape, similar to that of another star found in the ruins of a second-century C.E. synagogue in Kfar Nahum (Capernaum): The Beth-El hexagram was recently defaced.

In the ruins of Kfar Nahum, we can still see another example of the star, one designed with straight lines, composed of two equilateral, symmetrically interwoven triangles.