Crescent and star

The star and crescent develops in the iconography of the Hellenistic period in Pontus, the Bosporan Kingdom, and notably Byzantium by the 2nd century BC. It is the conjoined representation of the crescent and a star, both of which constituent elements have a long prior history in the iconography of the Ancient Near East as representing either Sun and Moon, or Moon and Morning Star (or their divine personifications). Coins with crescent and star symbols represented separately have a longer history, with possible ties to older Mesopotamian iconography. The star or Sun is often shown within the arc of the crescent (also called star in crescent or star within crescent for disambiguation of depictions of a star and a crescent side by side); In numismatics in particular, the term crescent and pellet is used in cases where the star is simplified to a single dot.

In Byzantium, the symbol became associated its patron goddess Artemis-Hecate, and it is used as a representation of Moon goddesses (Selene-Luna or Artemis-Diana) in the Roman era. Ancient depictions of the symbol always show the crescent with horns pointing upward, and with the star (often with eight rays) placed inside the crescent. This arrangement is also found on Sassanid coins beginning in the 5th or 6th century.

The combination is found comparatively rarely in late medieval and early modern heraldry. It rose to prominence with its adoption as the flag and emblem of the Ottoman Empire and of some of its administrative divisions (eyalets and vilayets), and later in the 19th-century Westernizing tanzimat (reforms). The Ottoman flag of 1844 with a white ay-yıldız (Turkish for "crescent-star") on a red background continues to be in use as the flag of the Republic of Turkey with minor modifications. Other states formerly part of the Ottoman Empire also used the symbol, including Libya (1951–1969 and after 2011), Tunisia (1956) and Algeria (1958). The same symbol was used in other national flags introduced during the 20th century, including the flags of Azerbaijan (1918), Pakistan (1947), Malaysia (1948), Singapore (1959) and Mauritania (1959).

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