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| 🜨 ♁ ☷ 🜃 | |
|---|---|
Earth symbol | |
| In Unicode | U+1F728 🜨ALCHEMICAL SYMBOL FOR VERDIGRIS U+2641 ♁EARTH (Globus cruciger) U+2637 ☷TRIGRAM FOR EARTH U+1F703 🜃ALCHEMICAL SYMBOL FOR EARTH |
| Different from | |
| Different from | U+23DA ⏚EARTH GROUND Electrical earth (ground) |
A variety ofsymbols or iconographic conventions are used to representEarth, whether in the sense ofplanet Earth, or theinhabited world, or as aclassical element. A circle representing the round world, with the rivers ofGarden of Eden separating thefour corners of the world, or rotated 45° to suggest thefour continents, remains a common pictographic convention to express the notion of "worldwide". The currentastronomical symbols for the planet are a circle with an intersecting cross,.svg)
,[1] and aglobus cruciger,.svg)
. Although theInternational Astronomical Union (IAU) now discourages the use ofplanetary symbols, this is an exception, being used in abbreviations such asM🜨 orM♁ forEarth mass.[2]
The earliest type of symbols areallegories, personifications or deifications, mostly in the form of anEarth goddess (in the case ofEgyptian mythology a god,Geb).[3]
Before the recognition of thespherical shape of the Earth in theHellenistic period, the main attribute of the Earth was its beingflat.[4][5] TheEgyptian hieroglyph for "earth, land" depicts a stretch of flat alluvial land with grains of sand (Gardiner N16: 𓇾). The Sumeriancuneiform sign for "earth, place"KI (𒆠) originates as a picture of a "threshing floor", and theChinese character (土) originated as a lump of clay on a potting wheel.
In Chinese mysticism, theclassical element "Earth" is represented by thetrigram of three broken lines in theI Ching (☷).[6]
The Western (early modern)alchemical symbol for earth is a downward-pointing triangle bisected by a horizontal line (🜃).[7] Other symbols for the earth in alchemy or mysticism include the square and theserpent.[8]
In theRoman period, theglobe, a representation of the spherical Earth, became the main symbol representing the concept.The globe depicted the "universe" (pictured as thecelestial sphere) as well as the Earth.[9]
.png)
Theglobus cruciger (♁) is the globe surmounted by aChristian cross, held byByzantine Emperors on the one hand to represent theChristianecumene, on the other hand theakakia represented the mortal nature of all men.
In the medieval period, theknown world was also represented by theT-and-O figure, representing an extremely simplifiedworld map of the three classical continents of theOld World, viz.Asia,Europe andAfrica (in various orientations:
,.svg)
,.svg)
,
).
Unicode encodes four characters representing the globe in theMiscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block:
