A variety of

symbol A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...

s or iconographic conventions are used to represent

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surf ...

, whether in the sense of

planet Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surface ...

, or the inhabited world, or as a classical element. A circle representing the round world, with the rivers of

Garden of Eden In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden ( he, גַּן־עֵדֶן, ) or Garden of God (, and גַן־אֱלֹהִים ''gan-Elohim''), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the Bible, biblical paradise described in Book of Genesis, Genes ...

separating the four corners of the world, or rotated 45° to suggest the

four continents Europeans in the 16th century divided the world into four continents: Africa, America, Asia, and Europe. Each of the four continents was seen to represent its quadrant of the world—Africa in the south, America in the west, Asia in the east, a ...

, remains a common pictographic convention to express the notion of "worldwide". The current

astronomical symbol Astronomical symbols are abstract pictorial symbols used to represent astronomical objects, theoretical constructs and observational events in European astronomy. The earliest forms of these symbols appear in Greek papyrus texts of late ant ...

for the planet is a circle with an intersecting cross, 20px, 🜨, alt=An equilateral cross enclosed in a circle. Although the

International Astronomical Union The International Astronomical Union (IAU; french: link=yes, Union astronomique internationale, UAI) is a nongovernmental organisation with the objective of advancing astronomy in all aspects, including promoting astronomical research, outreach ...

(IAU) now discourages the use of planetary symbols, this is an exception, being used in abbreviations such as ''M''_🜨 for

Earth mass An Earth mass (denoted as M_\mathrm or M_\oplus, where ⊕ is the standard astronomical symbol for Earth), is a unit of mass equal to the mass of the planet Earth. The current best estimate for the mass of Earth is , with a relative uncertainty ...

History

The earliest type of symbols are allegories, personifications or deifications, mostly in the form of an

Earth goddess An Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth. Earth goddesses are often associated with the " chthonic" deities of the underworld. Ki and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corr ...

(in the case of

Egyptian mythology Egyptian mythology is the collection of myths from ancient Egypt, which describe the actions of the Egyptian gods as a means of understanding the world around them. The beliefs that these myths express are an important part of ancient Egypti ...

a god, Geb). Before the recognition of the spherical shape of the Earth in the

Hellenistic period In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

, the main attribute of the Earth was its being ''flat''. The Egyptian hieroglyph for "earth, land" depicts a stretch of flat alluvial land with grains of sand (

Gardiner Gardiner may refer to: Places Settlements ;Canada * Gardiner, Ontario ;United States * Gardiner, Maine * Gardiner, Montana * Gardiner (town), New York ** Gardiner (CDP), New York * Gardiner, Oregon * Gardiner, Washington * West Gardiner, Maine ...

N16: 𓇾). The Sumerian cuneiform sign for "earth, place" KI (𒆠) originates as a picture of a "threshing floor", and the

Chinese character Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as '' kan ...

(土) originated as a lump of clay on a potting wheel.

Earth, the classical element

In Chinese mysticism, the classical element "Earth" is represented by the

trigram Trigrams are a special case of the ''n''-gram, where ''n'' is 3. They are often used in natural language processing for performing statistical analysis of texts and in cryptography for control and use of ciphers and codes. Frequency Context ...

of three broken lines in the

I Ching The ''I Ching'' or ''Yi Jing'' (, ), usually translated ''Book of Changes'' or ''Classic of Changes'', is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zh ...

(☷). The Western (early modern) alchemical symbol for earth is a downward-pointing triangle bisected by a horizontal line (🜃). Other symbols for the earth in alchemy or mysticism include the square and the serpent.

The planet

In the

Roman period The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediter ...

, the

globe A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model glo ...

, a representation of the spherical Earth, became the main symbol representing the concept. The globe depicted the "universe" (pictured as the

celestial sphere In astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an abstract sphere that has an arbitrarily large radius and is concentric to Earth. All objects in the sky can be conceived as being projected upon the inner surface of the celestial sphere, ...

) as well as the Earth. Diagrammatic T-O world map - 12th c

The

globus cruciger The ''globus cruciger'' ( for, , Latin, cross-bearing orb), also known as "the orb and cross", is an orb surmounted by a cross. It has been a Christian symbol of authority since the Middle Ages, used on coins, in iconography, and with a sceptre ...

(♁) is the globe surmounted by a Christian cross, held by

Byzantine Emperors This is a list of the Byzantine emperors from the foundation of Constantinople in 330 AD, which marks the conventional start of the Byzantine Empire, Eastern Roman Empire, to Fall of Constantinople, its fall to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 AD. On ...

on the one hand to represent the

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words '' Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρ ...

ecumene The ecumene ( US spelling) or oecumene ( UK spelling; grc-gre, οἰκουμένη, oikouménē, inhabited) is an ancient Greek term for the known, the inhabited, or the habitable world. In Greek antiquity, it referred to the portions of the worl ...

, on the other hand the

akakia The ''akakia'' (, el, , literally or "not-wickedness". ''a-'' "not" or "against", ''kakia'' "wickedness"), previously known as an ''anexikakia'' ("enduring wickedness", "forgiveness", "forbearance", "patience") was a cylindrical purple silk rol ...

represented the mortal nature of all men. In the medieval period, the known world was also represented by the T-and-O figure, representing an extremely simplified

world map A world map is a map of most or all of the surface of Earth. World maps, because of their scale, must deal with the problem of map projection, projection. Maps rendered in two dimensions by necessity distort the display of the three-dimensiona ...

of the three classical continents of the

Old World The "Old World" is a term for Afro-Eurasia that originated in Europe , after Europeans became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, which were previously thought of by th ...

, viz. ''

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

'' and ''

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

'' (in various orientations: 🜖, U+1F717

, ⦺, file:T-and-O map symbol.svg). Unicode encodes four characters representing the globe in the

Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs is a Unicode block containing meteorological and astronomical symbols, emoji characters largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' implementations of Shift JIS, and characters originally fr ...

block: *EARTH GLOBE EUROPE-AFRICA U+1F30D *EARTH GLOBE AMERICAS U+1F30E *EARTH GLOBE ASIA-AUSTRALIA U+1F30F *GLOBE WITH MERIDIANS U+1F310

References

External links

{{Earth Alchemical symbols

Symbol A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...

Astronomical symbols

History

Earth, the classical element

The planet

See also

References

External links