Americans found in Marib numerous stone sculptures of the heads of a bull with recesses for a drain of sacrificial blood. To the right of Marib lies the second temple – the round sanctuary of Balkis, Queen of Sheba. Archaeologists for several months unearthed in the sand near Marib temple oval 350 meters in circumference-temple Balkis. They dug up the remains of an elegant hall with columns and an extensive building with eight high pilasters. On the inner wall of the temple found located in a row 64 carved in a niche of false Windows, decorated with bars. Eight and sixty-four are the numbers of the heavenly goddess Venus, not the numbers of the moon. Obviously, among the ancient Arabs the image of the heavenly goddess, Venus merged with the image of the Queen of Sheba – Balkis. Just exactly in religious symbols merge images of the moon and Venus.
Archaeological excavations prove that the sanctuary of Balkis was dedicated to the moon God.
And here, when you delve into the complex interweaving of ideas of the ancient Arabs about Allah and his prophets, the question inevitably arises, what was the meaning of the temple of Balkis for them, if the Arabs have the Moon and the morning star – masculine?
What is interesting, but the type of boats, resembling the sickle of the moon, found in modern locals in the marshy lower Euphrates, near the city of Ur, reminiscent of Italian gondolas. Ancient robbers plundered the tombs of kings and pharaohs, but did not touch the «sacred» boats. Apparently, they were considered sacred and inviolable; these boats are similar to those found near the graves of the pharaohs on the Nile, although there they were much larger and sometimes richer. On these boats the dead king and his court – were sent to «the light». The boats of the dead are distributed throughout the space from Northern Europe to Africa and from the Mediterranean to the South Pacific. In short: this is a copy of the Crescent moon, which floats across the sky as the ocean to the East – toward the Sun. There, in the shining and sparkling country of the Sun, the celestial boat disappears. There is «another world».
Various multiplications of squares gave rise to a complex polygonal pattern. The triangle denotes the «eye» of God (the motive of the ancient magical notions), two-folded triangle «sign of David» – two symbolic eyes of God, who is supposedly overseeing everything. The Pentagon symbolized the five commandments of Islam (faith in the one God, five-time prayer, alms, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca).
Appeal to geometric figures existed in the pre-Islamic period among the Arab nomads. Living in the desert, they were guided by the stars, the Sun, the moon and marked their views with geometric signs. With the spread of Islam, ancient astrological symbolism is closely intertwined with the symbols of religion. The Crescent moon, boat, resembling a Crescent moon are found in many ancient cultures, e.g. in ancient Egyptian and Sumerian. Models of boats found by archaeologists as if copy the moon sickle, like a ship. Therefore, the ornament in the medieval Muslim society was «read» as an open book. Developing under the influence of visual traditions of other peoples, it is much more complicated. Along with geometric patterns and inscriptions, floral motifs are widely used in the ornament. Ornament – «music for the eyes» – became for artists the main sphere of application of creative forces, its unprecedented development as if filled restrictions of some fine arts. The religious ban, formulated only by the end of the 8th century, was not always observed. Many areas of creativity were associated with the requirements of secular culture-miniature, Palace paintings, and crafts.
