swastika

An ancient ideogram, signs of which have been found in the Euphrates-Tigris Valley, and in some areas of the Indus valley, dating back 3,000 years old; it became commonly used around 1000 BC, possibly first in ancient Troy, in the northwest of modern Turkey. The swastika is an irregular icosagon (a 20-sided polygon), which in Arabic and Indian culture originally represented good luck. Of course, in more recent times, it was adopted as the symbol of the Nazi Party in Hitler's Germany and thus came to stand for anti-Semitism. The ancient Indian and modern Nazi swastiks are not identical, however, as the arms are in opposite direction.

Related category

• POLYGONS

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