Ancient Seals From Babylon

The Magen David - the Star of David - was derived from the medieval Arab Seal of Solomon motif, and did not become a widespread symbol of Judaism until the 19th century. To my knowledge there is not one single authentic ancient Judaean artifact or coin which displays a Magen David. Menorahs, yes. Palm branches, yes. Jewish Stars, no.

On the contrary, the presence of the motif on a supposedly ancient Judaean artifact is typically seen as evidence of a tourist trinket produced by overreaching forgers/fakers.

[quote]To my knowledge there is not one single authentic ancient Judaean artifact or coin which displays a Magen David. Menorahs, yes. Palm branches, yes. Jewish Stars, no./quote]

Thank you for your input. However I would like to point out that the Star of David has been a Jewish symbol for centuries. It is true that it was adopted by the Zionist movement in the 19th century and then became more wildly used.

Here is an interesting article that I found on the web which illustrates that the symbol that we call the star of David was used by many people, not just Jews in ancient times.
http://star-of-david.blogspot.co.il...logical.html

Nevertheless I accept that they may just be some tourist token although they were
found by an Iraqi schoolboy in the ruins of ancient Babylon

As the article linked to by Angielczyk states, the earliest recorded use of the Star of David as an unambiguous peculiarly Jewish symbol is in Europe, circa AD 500. If it was used earlier as a religious symbol, there is no record or mention of it that has survived. It is recorded in earlier Jewish contexts, but it always seems to occur as a decorative pattern rather than as a symbol (eg. the repeating pattern of hexagrams, pentagrams and swastikas in the Capernaum synagogue). It does not appear to have been a "Jewish symbol" during the time of the Exile.

Finally, the ruins of Babylon have been worked, reworked, shoddily rebuilt by Saddam Hussein, blown up by ISIS and otherwise quite thoroughly picked over by archaeologists and looters for the past several hundred years. This would have been true in 1980 as well, except for the ISIS part. I'm pretty sure there are not going to be any genuine artifacts of any kind just lying around for people to pick up, let alone artifacts of such cultural and historical significance as physical evidence of the Exile. I could be wrong, but I believe the only evidence of the Exile found in Babylon itself have been a few clay tablets mentioning Jewish families.