Private Collection Hand painted Star of David 24K GOLD Spain Plate The Magen David (Heb. מָגֵן דָּוִד; shield of David more commonly known as the Star of David), the symbol most commonly associated with Judaism today, is the hexagram or six-pointed star formed by two equilateral triangles which have the same center and are placed in opposite directions.Between 1300 and 1700 the two terms, shield of David and seal of Solomon, are used indiscriminately, predominantly in magical texts, but slowly the former gained ascendancy. It was also used, from 1492, as a printers\' sign, especially in books printed in Prague in the first half of the 16th century and in the books printed by the Foa family in Italy and Holland, who incorporated it in their coat of arms. Several Italian Jewish families followed their example between 1660 and 1770. All these usages had as yet no general Jewish connotation. The official use of the shield of David can be traced to Prague, from where it spread in the 17th and 18th centuries through Moravia and Austria and later to southern Germany and Holland. In 1354, Charles IV granted the Prague community the privilege of bearing its own flag – later called in documents \"King David\'s flag\" – on which the hexagram was depicted. It therefore became an official emblem, probably chosen because of its significance as a symbol of the days of old when King David, as it were, wore it on his shield. This explains its wide use in Prague, in synagogues, on the official seal of the community, on printed books, and on other objects. Here it was always called magen David. Its use on the tombstone (1613) of David Gans, the astronomer and historian, was still exceptional, obviously in reference to the title of his last work Magen David. Except for one tombstone in Bordeaux (c. 1726), no other example of its being used on tombstones is known before the end of the 18th century. A curious parallel to the development in Prague is the one case of a representation of the Synagogue as an allegorical figure, holding a flag bearing the magen David in a 14th-century Catalan manuscript of the Breviar d\'amor by Matfre d\'Ermengaud (Ms. of Yates Thompson 31 in the British Museum).

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