Eli Benakot, Space

Photo of Star of David in a work titled SPACE, mixed media on paper glued on canvas, 120x100 cm,is courtesy of my good old friend, musician and painter, Eli Benakot who told me that he used for this work paintings of children collected while he was wandering in the streets of Jerusalem.
Copyrights: Eli Benakot 2007
renatal@hatzor.org.il

Tombs of Marissa

Peters and Thiersch wrote in their book Tombs of Marissa, 1905, p. 60

On the opposite jamb are various pentagrams and hexagrams such as were used as signs of greetings in secret friendly intercourses, as among the Pythagorians.

Marissa is today in the national garden at Beit Guvrin. Regrettably Peters and Thiersch didn’t publish a photo of this important finding which is one of very few that were found in Israel in the 2-3 century B.C.E.
This is the first time I hear about hexagrams used as signs of greetings by Pythagorians and I don’t know were did Peters and Thiersch take this info from.

Megiddo

I took this photo from William Graham’s book, Culture and Conscience, Chicago University press, 1936, p. 245 and colored it a bit in Photoshop.
Graham wrote that it is incised on the side of a building of Megiddo. He thinks that this  symbol originated in astrology and referred to S.A. Cook, The religion of Ancient Palestine in the light of Archaeology, pp. 213.
S.A. Cook wrote there:

Distinctively Jewish are…the pentagram or seal of Solomon, and the hexagram, or Shield of David…they may be of astral origin (Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, p. 529).

I already mentioned that professor Michael Costa wrote in his Hebrew book about the Golden Section that this Magen David, same as we recognize it today, drawn in lines, is from the period of King Ahab(853 - 874 B.C).