Shield and Star, King David and Hercules

This Greek Terracotta Drinking Cup (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC), which is dated to ca. 560 B.C.E., shows Hercules fighting an Amazon. Right at the center we see a Shield with a six-pointed star surrounding a lily. In every day language, we might say that we see here the Star of David on a Shield. It makes you think that this is the ORIGIN of the Jewish legend about King David’s Shield with the six-pointed star engraved on it (or that King David who ruled around 1000 B.C.E. influenced the Greek mythology).
This picture is of the highest importance to me:

1. Up to the present moment I didn’t publish any picture of Greek six-pointed stars.
2. The connection between the six-pointed star and the lily, which became frequent in the first centuries C.E. (for instance, in Capernaum Synagogue ruins and in Ein Yael near Jerusalem)
3. The connection between the six-pointed star and the Shield.
4. The connection between Hercules and King David (they both are legendary heroes who killed a lion and a giant etc.)

This picture was taken by: Glenn Gulley from Flickr. Copyright: Glenn Gulley 2008

P.S.

Pay attention that aside from the inner hexagram the composition imitates two equilateral triangles: a. arms and toes; b. heads and knees.

I guess if German rabbi and folklorist Max Grunwald [1871-1953] knew about this discovery, he would have jumped on it as a proof to his theory [Historia Judaica: a Journal of Studies in Jewish History, Espescially in the Legal and Economic History of the Jews, Vol. IX, 1947 , translated from German by Hilde Kisch, p. 118 ff] and in the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia entry "Shield of David"

The use of the term “shield” points to an astrological and mythical connection, and is reminiscent of the shield of Melkart (Hercules), with which the latter slew the giant Antaeus

 Six pointed star on a shield from7Th Century B.C. Etruscan grave stele of Avele Feluske from Vetulonia, The National Archaeological Museum of Florence
:See also 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/philrickerby/3064793275/

Free Masons’ hexagram

Picture of Free Masons’ hexagram on the building of the lodge of Edinburgh in Scotland is courtesy of “tillwe” from Flickr.

Olive Wood Candlestick

For Chanukah, which starts next week, Aviram Paz from Kibbutz Mishmar Ha'emek prepared in his amateur carpentry workshop this original olive wood candlestick in the shape of the Star of David, and without any nail.
Size: 60X60 cm
Courtesy of Aviram Paz
Photographed by: David Eynav
Copyright: David Eynav 2008

48 Triangles David Stars

48 Triangles make 2 David Stars, one inside the other 

I created this Photoshop work influenced by the same pattern at the Ishak Bey Mosque, Macedonia, but the photo I published from that place was too small, so I thought it would be nice to show you the admirable ingenuity of the Muslim geometricians who must have been behind the scenes.

Another Brewery Six Pointed Star From Iowa

This is a Six Pointed Star from the floor of the Brewery at Dubuque, Iowa, USA. It continues a long chain of relationships between the hexagram and alcohol, starting from the 8th century BCE.

Picture is courtesy of "heimer66" from Flickr

P. D. Ouspensky: Union of Space and Time

Here's a new meaning of the six-pointed star, which no one mentioned [in this blog] until now: 

The six-pointed star which represented the world in ancient symbolism is in reality the representation of space-time or the " period of dimensions ", ie of the three space-dimensions and the three time-dimensions in their perfect union, where every point of space includes the whole of time, and every moment of time includes the whole of space; when everything is everywhere and always. But this state of six-dimensional space is incomprehensible and inaccessible to us…

Copied from: A New Model of the Universe  By P. D. Ouspensky Page 445 Published by Courier Dover Publications, 1997

ISBN 0486297012

Brewery Six Pointed Star

Brewery Six Pointed Star from Dubuque, Iowa, USA  - picture is courtesy of "SD Dirk" from Flickr