The Star of Damascus

There is a Six-Pointed Star on the U.S. Sword Blades which looks exactly like a Star of David. It consists of two triangles combined together, not two, separate, interlocking triangles. The writer of the article that appears in the in the website titled military-sword
Cannot absolutely confirm the history of this Six-Pointed Star;
The blade specifications for both the U.S. and British military swords require the six-pointed star with the word "Proved" etched on the blade. As best we can tell, the specification for the six-pointed star is historical in nature and was likely used to signify that the blade was manufactured using the Damascus steel method.
According to historian Ken Smith-Christmas (a curator at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Museum, Quantico, Virginia) the Damascus craftsmen were renowned for their secretive art of making steel. They formed a guild and their symbol was this six-pointed star, the star of Damascus. Wilkerson sword makers used this symbol for publicity and soon other sword makers copied the symbol on their own swords.
Now the question is: where did the Damascus craftsmen get this symbol from 1000 years ago? Readers who know how to get an answer for this question are encouraged to comment.

Rotas Opera Tenet Arepo Sator

There's an enigmatic connection between the Star of David and the Magic Square
Rotas Opera tenet Arepo Sator (Shorter name: Sator) . The Sator is a palindrome that can be read in the same way from four directions of the square. There are dozens of interpretations of its meaning, but still there is no consent which of them is right.
I found two instances of this connection:
1. Elio Galasso wrote an on line book in order to show that the most ancient Sator found in Pompeii, dated 79 C.E, is eligible if you put a Star of David on it and read the letters along its lines and not from left to right.
2. M. Costa ["Hatakh ha-zahav, hotam Shelomoh u-magen-David", Poalim, 1990, Hebrew, pp. 174 [copied a whole page from A. Kircher's book "arithmology" (1646) with a Star of David encircling a Sator.
IMHO the Star of David and the Sator served for many centuries as amulets. Their perfect symmetry doesn't allow the penetration of evil spirits from any side. This is a solution for amulets that contain words since those that go from left to right can be read by the demons from right to left and those that go from right to left can be read by the demons from left to right. This solution is a double action prevention device and its proliferation shows how convincing it was….
Rotas Opera Tenet Arepo Sator can be translated: The sower, Arepo, guides the wheels with care.
The earliest examples are Roman: Two Sator squares were discovered in the ruins of Pompeii, Italy. There is a Christian interpretation that many scholars accept, which claims that the Sator contains the PATER NOSTER prayer plus A and O (alpha and omega in Greek). This could mean Christianity reached Pompeii at a very early date. These scholars believe that during that time of persecution the owners of the house were it was found used the Sator as a secret sign showing they were Christians. Another version is that it was put on the side of houses which offered refuge to Christians, who were the only people who knew how to decipher the code. Other historians think that the Sator was even older than the Christian Church.
Four Sators were unearthed in 1931-32 excavations in Dura Europos, in Syria; three of them on the walls of a [Roman] military office in a building that had originally been the temple of Artemis Azzanathkona. In 1868 it was found in excavations of a Roman villa, scratched on a wall plaster, at Corinium Dobunnorum, near Victoria Road in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England. Another Sator square was found in Manchester and is considered to be the earliest evidence of Christianity in Britain. There are some specimens of it in Egypt, in Cappadocia, in Aquincum, in Hungary, on the wall of the Duomo of Siena, Italy, in the pavement outside the church of the Knights in Valetta, Malta…In later periods uncountable other examples have been found all over the world.
Rose Mary Sheldon wrote an excellent review of the literature on this subject.
Picture (courtesy of Synwell Liberation Front from Flickr) shows wall-plaster from second century C.E., excavated at Victoria Road, Cirencester, 1868

Man's Tombstone, Woman's Tombstone

Lindsey Friedman studied one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in North America, the Shaarai Shomayim cemetery, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which was founded in 1747 and discovered that The Magen David was put on the men’s tombstones while a chanukiyah was put on the women’s.
Friedman said the reason was that women light candles while men are more prominent in synagogue.

King Solomon Sword

On the WWW I saw an offer to buy a gold King Solomon Sword made in Toledo, Spain.
The images on the sword included the Solomon’s seal and the Ark of the Covenant.
I liked the merchants' trial to link the sword to the famous story about the sentence of Solomon, where

Two women were fighting for a child and King Solomon, in order to find out which one was telling the truth , gave his sword to a soldier and ordered him to split the baby in two, giving one half to each of the women. The real mother begged the king not to kill the child and to give him to the other woman. In this way, King Solomon knew immediately which one was lying showing great wisdom and fairness.

Roy Shinar Star of David Ceiling1

Roy told me that he painted this ceiling in the Synagogue of Maalot after seeing a similar design on a book of old Synagogues' frescos. This specific one is from Morocco and he liked this shape that looks like three eight figures which reminded him of a pumpkin.
Copyright: Roy Shinar 2006

Roy Shinar Star of David Ceiling

Magen David appears on Roy Shinar's painted Ceiling.

Roy Shinar Star of David window

Photo courtesy of painter Roy Shinar (Mobile: 972503596500 son of my dear friend painter Itzhak Shhwartz ) whom I met yesterday drawing portraits in five minutes in the Jerusalem Annual Art Fair at Chutzot Hayotzer.Roy told me that he used the central original triangle in the window and added to it the missing triangles so that the end result is a camouglaged Star of David.