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A solar symbol is a symbol representing the Sun. Common solar symbols include circles (with or without rays), crosses, and spirals. In religious iconography, personifications of the Sun or solar attributes are often indicated by means of a halo or a radiate crown.
When the systematic study of comparative mythology first became popular in the 19th century, scholarly opinion tended to over-interpret historical myths and iconography in terms of "solar symbolism". This was especially the case with Max Müller and his followers beginning in the 1860s in the context of Indo-European studies.. See also R. F. Littledale, "The Oxford Solar Myth, A Contribution to Comparative Mythology" in: Echoes from Kottabos, London (1906), 279–290 for a satire on this effect. Many "solar symbols" claimed in the 19th century, such as the swastika, triskele, Sun cross, etc. have tended to be interpreted more conservatively in scholarship since the later 20th century.notably ciriticized by Richard Chase, The Quest for Myth (1951); see also Astralkult for the more general tendency of over-interpretation of mythology in terms of astral mythology.
The disk can be modified in various ways, notably by adding rays (found in the Bronze Age in Egyptian depictions of Aten) or a Sun cross. In the ancient Near East, the solar disk could also be modified by addition of the Uraeus (rearing cobra), and in ancient Mesopotamia it was shown with Winged sun.
The "Sun" logogram in early Chinese writing, beginning with the oracle bone script (c. 12th century BC) also shows the solar disk with a central dot (analogous to the Egyptian hieroglyph); under the influence of the writing brush, this character evolved into a square shape (modern 日).
The Vergina Sun (also known as the Star of Vergina, Macedonian Star, or Argead Star) is a rayed solar symbol appearing in ancient Greek art from the 6th to 2nd centuries BC. The Vergina Sun appears in art variously with sixteen, twelve, or eight triangular rays.
Bianchini's planisphere, produced in the 2nd century, has a circlet with rays radiating from it.
Two pictograms resembling the Sun with rays are used to represent the settings of luminance in display devices. They have been encoded in Unicode since version6.0 in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block under U+1505 as "low brightness symbol" () and U+1F506 as "high brightness symbol" ().
The Arevakhach ("solar cross") symbol often found in Armenian Khachkar is claimed as an ancient Armenian solar symbol of eternity and light.Айк Демоян «Армянские национальные символы» = «Հայկական ազգային խորհրդանշաններ». — Ереван: «Пюник», 2013.
Some Sámi shaman drums have the Beaivi Sámi sun symbol that resembles a sun cross.
The swastika has been a long-standing symbol of good fortune in Eurasian cultures: its appropriation by the Nazi Party from 1920 to 1945 is a brief moment in its history. It may be derived from the sun cross, and is another solar symbol in some contexts. (1976). 9780070463080, McGraw-Hill. ISBN 9780070463080
It is used among Buddhism ( manji), Jainism, and Hinduism; and many other cultures, though not necessarily as a solar symbol.
The "Black Sun" (German: Schwarze Sonne) is a 'sun wheel' with twelve-fold rotational symmetry. The design was incorporated as a mosaic into a floor of Wewelsburg Castle during the Nazi era and may have been inspired by Iron Age swastika-like designs in Migration-period . It has been adopted by modern Satanism groups and .
The "Kolovrat", or in Polish Słoneczko, represents the Sun in Slavic neopaganism.
The depictions of the sun on the flags of the Republic of China (Taiwan), Kazakhstan, Kurdistan, the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, and Nepal have only straight (triangular) rays; that of Kyrgyzstan has only curvy rays; while that of the Philippines has short diverging rays grouped into threes.
Another rayed form of the sun has simple radial lines dividing the background into two colors, as in the military flags of Japan and the flag of North Macedonia, and in the top parts of the flags of Tibet and Arizona.
The flag of New Mexico is based on the Zia sun symbol which has four groups of four parallel rays emanating symmetrically from a central circle.
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