Older than any one people
The six-pointed star, formed of two interlocking triangles, appears across a wide range of ancient cultures, including Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian, Slavic, and Celtic traditions, generally understood as representing the joining of two complementary principles — heavenly and earthly, or masculine and feminine — each carried by one of the two triangles.
In Hindu and Slavic tradition
In India, the shape became known as the Seal of Vishnu, believed capable of warding off evil, and was also read as the union of Shiva and Kali, or as an emblem of balance between the human and the divine. In Slavic folk tradition, the same shape is remembered as the Zvezda Velesa, or Star of Veles, associated with a god of fertility and found on artifacts such as bronze belt buckles and buttons from early Rus culture; it later appears as a decorative element on the Cap of Monomakh, the ceremonial crown used in the coronation of Russian tsars.
Becoming a Jewish symbol
According to the scholar Gershom Scholem, an authority on Jewish mysticism, the hexagram was not originally a distinctly Jewish emblem and had no special connection to the historical King David; its association with Judaism developed gradually, beginning with decorative use on synagogues and, from the fourteenth century, adoption by specific communities such as Prague's Jewish community as an official emblem. It became a broadly recognized Jewish national symbol only in the nineteenth century, appearing on Jewish gravestones by that century's end, and later on the flag of the State of Israel.