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A sun cross (also ''solar cross'', ''wheel cross'') is the term for a symbol consisting of an equilateral cross inside a circle when considered as a solar symbol. The design is frequently found in the symbolism of prehistoric cultures, particularly during the Neolithic to Bronze Age periods of European prehistory. The symbol's ubiquity and apparent importance in prehistoric religion have given rise to its interpretation as a solar symbol, whence the modern English term "sun cross" (a calque of German ''Sonnenkreuz''). The symbol can be depicted in Unicode as U+2295 (⊕ globe with equator and a meridian). The same symbol is in use as a modern astronomical symbol representing the Earth rather than the Sun. ==Interpretation as solar symbol== The interpretation of the simple equilateral cross as a solar symbol in Bronze Age religion was widespread in 19th-century scholarship. The cross-in-a-circle was interpreted as a solar symbol derived from the interpretation of the disc of the Sun as the wheel of the chariot of the Sun god.〔Martin Persson Nilsson, ''The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and Its Survival in Greek Religion'', Biblo & Tannen Publishers, 1950, p. 421. "there is a wide-spread opinion that the equal-limbed cross is another symbol of the sun. It was, for example, a favourite theory of the late Professor Montelius, and has been embraced by many other archaeologists; its wide acceptance being due to an interest in finding a pre-Christian origin of the symbol of Christianity. The disc of the sun was regarded as a wheel; hence the myth that the sun-god drives in a chariot across the heavens" 〕 Wieseler (1881) postulated an (unattested) Gothic rune ''hvel'' ("wheel") representing the solar deity by the "wheel" symbol of a cross-in-a-circle, reflected by the Gothic letter ''hwair'' (𐍈).〔 Karl Georg Wieseler (1813–1883), ''Untersuchungen Zur Geschichte Und Religion Der Alten Germanen in Asien Und Europa'', 1881, (p. 157 ). The suggestion of a specifically Gothic variant of the runic alphabet partially preserved in the Gothic alphabet is due to Jacob Grimm's ''Deutsche Mythologie'' (1835). 〕 The English term "Sun-Cross", on the other hand, is comparatively recent, apparently loaned from German ''Sonnenkreuz'' and used in the 1955 translation of Rudolf Koch's ''Book of Signs'' ("The Sun-Cross or Cross of Wotan", p. 94). The German term ''Sonnenkreuz'' was used in 19th-century scholarly literature of any cross symbol interpreted as a solar symbol, an equilateral cross either with or without a circle, or an oblique cross (Saint Andrew's cross). ''Sonnenkreuz'' was used of the flag design of the Paneuropean Union in the 1920s.〔Richard Nicolaus Graf von Coudenhove-Kalergi, 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sun cross」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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