The meaning of the eight-pointed star

[Restitvtvs]

Wikipedia "Star Symbol" article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_(symbol )#Eight-pointed_stars [enter entire string]) has little information about 8-point star symbols.

An excellent "Eight-Point Star" post and its responses ( http://moroccandesign.com/eight-point-star ) provide good background information, on the earliest known 8-point star use:

The Sumerians used an arrangement of lines as a symbol for both star and God. The linear eight-point star represented the goddess Inanna, Sumerian queen of the heavens and Ishtar (Astarte), the Babylonian goddess known as “The Lightbringer.” An eight-point star enclosed within a circle was the symbol for the sun god. The “Babylonian star-cult is the core and the archetype of subsequent astrology.”

and...

Sumer is located in an era of the world where several civilizations, such as Babylonian, Arkadian (Semetic), Elam (proto Indo-Iranian), Egyptian, and Greek expanded and retracted. It doesn’t require much imagination to imagine how these symbol migrated to other cultures...

The article also mentions how persons and groups may change others' symbols and practices, and co-opt them for their own uses. (If it's good enough for the gods, then maybe it's good enough and reserved exclusively for royalty. Especially with some royalty claiming deity, direct descent from a god, divinely sanctioned rule, etc.)

In addition to conquests and co-opting/adoption of conquered peoples' and royalties' symbols and practices, and royal intermarriages to further “stabilize” conquered peoples (Alexander the Great's Greeks were prime examples), I would add that people and groups, without conquests, also often communicate and trade, and that people migrate/emigrate/immigrate for many various reasons other than wars. Thus, a myriad of ways for ideas to spread between cultures.

I would further add that people within cultures have independently conceived and created similar ideas, including symbols with similar meanings, and although at different times, they are independent ideas nevertheless. Agriculture and writing systems are good examples. Therefore, idea “transmission” between cultures is not necessary to explain, and it does not explain by default, the existence of similar symbols and meanings in different cultures.

However, in this Greek case, I think that idea transmission between conquering and conquered peoples and royalty could be the most likely explanation, through several “paths,” splitting and merging over centuries.

More directly relevant to the original post…

Dr. Elias Kapetanopoulos' excellent "Phillip II Tomb" article ( http://www.history.ccsu.edu/elias/taphosphilippoub.htm ), 7th article body paragraph, 1st sentence:

...the suns (¥lioi) on the larnakes of the deceased are a symbol of royalty...

The article’s images show various Greek late 4th/early 3rd century B.C. uses of 8-point stars and derived 16-point stars (with 8 greater and 8 lesser points):

Kinch Tomb, fresco, probable Anatolian-Persian infantryman's shield:



Lyson-Kallikles Tomb, fresco, crest:



Philip II Tomb at Vergina, larnax:



Shield:



Several centuries later, Alexander Jannaeus ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Jannaeus#Coinage ) Judean 1st century B.C. 8-point star or "wheel" use, like that many centuries before, may have meant the "morning star" (Venus), the "sun," the "heavens," or most likely, his "royalty" (given Jewish principals then, to avoid human or animal representations, false deities, etc.). This symbolic use may have been passed through any number of historic-cultural transmission paths from one end of the fertile crescent to the other.

An Alexander Jannaeus bronze Prutah:



Similarly, Tigranes II's ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigranes_the_Great ) Armenian 1st century B.C. 8-point star use includes his coins with his image, showing his royal tiara with two eagles and an 8-point star. Stylistically very similar, shows clearer royal symbolic meaning.



and...



(from Livius)

The article further states...

Armenian rulers prior to Tigranes did not issue coins; he was the first one to do it. He took up the Seleucid tradition and struck coins of great interest.

In closing, although we cannot be absolutely sure, I think that we can be reasonably sure that the Kinch tomb fresco and related period artifacts refer to royalty, royal soldiers, and other things royal.