Peace symbols

The symbol is a superposition of the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D", taken to stand for "nuclear disarmament",[2] while simultaneously acting as a reference to Goya's The Third of May 1808 (1814) (aka "Peasant Before the Firing Squad").

[9][10] Appian describes the use of the olive-branch as a gesture of peace by the enemies of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus in the Numantine War[11] and by Hasdrubal of Carthage.

The Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, contains an allegorical painting by James Thornhill, Peace and Liberty Triumphing Over Tyranny (1708–1716), depicting King William III and Queen Mary (who had enacted the English Bill of Rights) enthroned in heaven with the Virtues behind them.

[15] In January 1775, the frontispiece of the London Magazine published an engraving of Peace descending on a cloud from the Temple of Commerce, bringing an olive branch to America and Britannia.

In July that year, the American Continental Congress adopted the "Olive Branch Petition" in the hope of avoiding a full-blown war with Great Britain.

For example, in the Catacomb of Callixtus, a dove and branch are drawn next to a Latin inscription NICELLA VIRCO DEI OVE VI XIT ANNOS P M XXXV DE POSITA XV KAL MAIAS BENE MERENTI IN PACE, meaning 'Nicella, God's virgin, who lived for more or less 35 years.

'[25] In another example, a shallow relief sculpture shows a dove with a branch flying to a figure marked in Greek as ΕΙΡΗΝΗ (Eirene, or 'Peace').

[27][28][29] The Christian symbolism of the olive branch, invariably carried by the dove, derives from Greek usage and the story of Noah in the Hebrew Bible.

According to Graydon Snyder, "The Noah story afforded the early Christian community an opportunity to express piety and peace in a vessel that withstood the threatening environment" of Roman persecution.

[39] In the Middle Ages, some Jewish manuscripts, which were often illustrated by Christians,[40] also showed Noah's dove with an olive branch, for example, the Golden Haggadah (about 1420).

[41][42] English Bibles from the 17th-century King James Bible onwards, which translated the story of Noah direct from Hebrew, render the Hebrew aleh zayit as 'olive leaf' rather than 'olive branch', but by this time the association of the dove with an olive branch as a symbol of peace in the story of Noah was firmly established.

The first known example of the symbol is in the masthead of the January 1909 issue of De Wapens Neder (Down with Weapons), the monthly paper of the International Antimilitarist Union in the Netherlands.

In 1915 it appeared on the cover of a pamphlet, Under det brukne Gevær (Under the Broken Rifle), published by the Norwegian Social Democratic Youth Association.

[citation needed] In 1921, Belgian workers marching through La Louvrière on 16 October 1921, carried flags showing a soldier breaking his rifle.

Ernst Friedrich, a German who had refused military service, founded the Anti-Kriegs Museum in Berlin, which featured a bas-relief broken rifle over the door.

The museum distributed broken-rifle badges, girls' and women's brooches, boys' belt buckles, and men's tie pins.

In 1935 a pact initiated by Roerich was signed by the United States and Latin American nations, agreeing that "historic monuments, museums, scientific, artistic, educational and cultural institutions" should be protected both in times of peace and war.

Roerich came across numerous later examples in various parts of the world, and knew that it represented a deep and sophisticated understanding of the triune nature of existence.

The sacred origins of the symbol, as an illustration of the trinities fundamental to all religions, remain central to the meaning of the Pact and the Banner today.

[1] It was "immediately accepted" as a symbol for the movement and used for a march from Trafalgar Square, London, to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire on 4 April.

I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad.

It became widely known in the United States in 1958 when Albert Bigelow, a pacifist protester, sailed a small boat fitted with the CND banner into the vicinity of a nuclear test.

[66] In 1970, two US private companies tried to register the peace symbol as a trade mark: the Intercontinental Shoe Corporation of New York and Luv, Inc. of Miami.

[70] In 1968, the anti-Communist evangelist Billy James Hargis described the symbol as a "broken cross", which he claimed represented the antichrist.

[71] In June 1970, American Opinion, the journal of the John Birch Society, published an article which compared the symbol to a supposed "broken cross" claimed to have been "carried by the Moors when they invaded Spain in the 8th century".

It depicted the Lydian Lion and Hellenic Bull, representing the peaceful alliance between Croesus and the dynasty of Agamemnon enthroned in Cyme.

[b] The imagery of a predator and prey lying down together in peace is reflected in other ancient literature, e.g. "...the calf and the lion and the yearling together..." c. 700 BC (Isaiah 11:6, see above).

[citation needed] The union of Phrygia and Lydia with Aeolian Greeks resulted in regional peace, which facilitated the transfer of ground-breaking technological skills into Ancient Greece; respectively, the phonetic written script[dubious – discuss] and the minting of coinage (to use a token currency, where the value is guaranteed by the state).