Egyptian cult.
(media.communities.win)
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It's a pet theory of mine that creeds and religions have fought for millennia, adopting similar sets of symbols each time.
For instance, the Eagle/Falcon & Sun - symbol of the god Ashur, certain parts of Egypt, ancient Rome, the Third Reich etc. - has frequently faced off with...
The Egyptian Crook & Flail, now better seen as the Hammer & Sickle.
Meanwhile, the Six-Pointed Star - symbol of the Babylonian minor god Ninurta, now a Judaism symbol (moreover, Ninurta is also associated with stone tablets, another Jewish symbol), seems to always clash with...
The symbol of the Crescent Moon and Star - associated both with the ancient goddess Inanna/Ishtar and with modern Islam.
And of course, the ancient Ankh is actually far closer to a modern Crucifix than the actual crucifying setup used by the Romans (since those were X-shaped).
I don't really try and read too much into this. My general conclusion is that symbols will always outlive scripture, though I don't think it's mere coincidence that the followers of these symbol sets tend to end up at odds with each other.
At the end of the day you can only have so much and it will look similar.
True. That's why I said I don't read too much into it. Still, one way to confirm a causal relationship from otherwise superficial similarity, is to see if there's a plausible timeline for the symbol to have evolved.
For instance, the original symbols of Christianity were the fish and the "chi rho" (which looks like a P over an X - and if you squint a bit, like a man's figure with his limbs stretched on the aforementioned X-shaped Roman crucifix). However, early Christianity was further molded in the care of the Coptic church, which used the Ankh, known as the "crux ansata", as a mainline symbol. And as the Coptic church was instrumental in the development of Christianity, eventually the symbol further developed into the Crucifix we know today.
The interesting coincidence here - and the reason I say symbols outlive scripture - is that the Ankh wasn't just a random scribble, but one of the most important symbols in Egyptian religion - signifying both divine domain and... eternal life. As in, the eternal life offered by the god Osiris, himself risen from the dead and having the power of judgment over all souls... Sounds familiar, doesn't it? A bit too much to be a coincidence on it's own, I'd wager.