House of Ge and the Seasons

Doro Levi in his monumental work titled Antioch Mosaic Pavements, Princeton 1945, pp. 346-7 described the mosaics found on House of Ge and the Seasons. His diagram shows four rooms. In room no. 1 there are five medallions, four of them representing the seasons. The center one representing Ge (Gaia), the Greek earth Goddess. In the second room

In the central panel of corridor 2, the round medallion within square contains a star of David formed by the interlacing triangles, one in cable and the other in guilloche

It is interesting to compare this mosaic to the one found in Villa Romana del Casale

in Sicily, where each season is contained in a hexagram of its own.

In the same book Doro Levi shows a photo of another hexagram from antioch that was found in Cilicia in room no 1. Between each two points there is a rhomb and in it a smaller rhomb. Inside the hexagram there's a hexagon and in it a circle. This hexagram mosic is part of a large pavement with many busts.

Esoteric Palace

Renaissance summerhouse built in the years 1555 – 1556 by Ferdinand I of Tirol, by his own design, in the shape of a hexagram according to cosmological ideas influenced by alchemy. In Europe similar buildings can be found, even though not frequently, only in Italy and France.

Menorah within a Star of David

Researcher Uri Ofir claims that the Magen David is part of the Tabernacle Menorah, but here it looks like the Menorah is part of the Magen David. This is what happens when you go straight ahead on the globe - soon you find out that you are in the opposite direction...
Picture is courtesy of "ibn-i batuta" who published it on Flickr.

Wood Carving

Picture of Wood Carving from a church in Ranworth, Norfolk, England is courtesy of "LeoL30" who published it on Flickr a. Notice that the hexagram is standing on two points. We are used to see it standing on one point. I don't know (yet) if there's a different meaning to each such position.

Islamic Mosaic Discovered in Ramla, Israel

Ramla Mosaic with Solomon’s Seal

CC picture by Anita363 (c) from Flickr (Mosaic Mosaic)

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Myriam Rosen-Ayalon from the Hebrew university in Jerusalem wrote in Israel Exploration Journal, Vo. 26, Jerusalem, Israel; pp. 104-119 about the eighth century mosaic that was found in 1973 in the yard of Mr. Sami Khuri of Tav-Kav-Beth Street in Ramla while he was preparing for canalization. The mosaic has three fragments.

On fragment B which is 3.20 meters wide and 4 meters long there are four hexagrams on a geometric composition complemented by floral motifs and isolated birds. Within each hexagram there is a fruit that looks like a citrus.

I found the references Myriam Rosen-Ayalon made to other Islamic findings very useful for my future research:

The six-pointed star sometimes occurred in pre-Islamic floor mosaics but mainly as an isolated motif. In some mosaics, the star was used as a frame for large compositions, or as a dominant subject, while in others it is just an isolated detail among a great variety of other geometric motifs. Three such examples are found in mosaics uncovered here:

Bethlehem,

Roglit

and el-Makr.

Its ornamental use was continued for a long period, and can be seen on some fragments of stone carving in the synagogue o Capernaum, though probably unconnected to the Jewish symbol adopted in recent times…

it appears on funerary slabs from the second century of the Hijra, either completely isolated , or three in a row, or next to a slightly different motif of crossing squares.

A wood carving from Takrit in Iraq, perhaps a sarcophagus, dated to the

Abbasid period 9th century C.E. has a particularly elaborate decoration including six-pointed star is kept at the Metropolitan Museum 33.41.la.de

 A wood carving from Takrit

From: Maurice Dimard, Ars Islamica, 1937, p. 296 

Another wood carving bearing the star motif is part of the minbar (pulpit) of Kairouan, dated A.D. 786-808 and also said to be from Mesopotemia.

Whithin the Umayyad period this motif is found at Khirbat al-Mafjar.

It exists as an isolated item and also in an overall pattern, as in our mosaic, in a grille decoration of a stucco window…Umayyad carved marble slab from the Grewat Mosque of Damascus.

A wooden panel from the Al Aqsa carvings …(A.D. 780)…http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/33.41.1a-e

Brewer

Picture is courtesy of Matthias Trum who wrote for Technical University Munich a thesis titled

Historical depictions, guild signs and symbols of the brewing and malting handcraft

Matthias' caption for this picture is

oldest depiction of a brewer is Pyprew (old german word for brewer) Herttel from 1425. The text on the picture states: "The 46th brother, who died here, was named Herttel Pyrprew" …One can see the brewing kettle with two rings attached to the sides plus two wooden vats. Above the brewer on a stick the hexagram...

Destroying Stars of David in Baghdad

I already wrote about the phenomenon of Arabs mutilating Stars of David, but here is an eye witness, Raed Jarrar, who wrote on his blog:

Speaking about Israel and David stars, Egypt was full of ornaments taking a six-sided-star shape. That reminded me of one of the funny memories about my university days in Baghdad. The municipality asked the Architectural department to send out all the students, and I was one of them, to check the streets of Baghdad for "David Stars". It was so stupid and ridiculous because the six-sided-star is more a middle Eastern symbol than a Jewish one, and neither myself nor the professors in the department thought it's a good idea to go and check for such stars on houses and ask the owners to destroy them. No one liked the idea, but no one dared to say No of course. Everyone said the famous statement "Good morning, Mr President, thank you for everything. Thank you very much for everything. I like you", but in Arabic at that time.

No wonder there are so few ancient Stars of David left in the world...it seems that archaeologists find only those which escaped the mutilators' eyes!