Sacred Circles in Christianity and Buddhism
Exploring the multiple meanings of the eight-spoked wheel
An eight-spoked wheel and ICHTHUS inscription from the Villa of the Quintili near Rome. Adapted from photo by J. Daniel Hays.
Archaeologists have discovered dozens of eight-spoked wheels scratched into the floors, walls, and architectural elements of Greco-Roman temples, fountains, and street intersections. A circle divided by lines radiating from a central point, an eight-spoked wheel is a simple form, yet also one that has mystified interpreters. It also happens to be one of the most famous religious symbols of Buddhism.
Eight-spoked wheels have been found at places such as Ephesus, Didyma, Aphrodisias, Delphi, Sardis, Laodicea, Rome, and Jerusalem. In the Fall 2026 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, J. Daniel Hays examines the two main hypotheses about these wheels, which can be best understood as graffiti: they were either game boards or cryptograms.
To the game board possibility, ancient cities contain numerous examples of informal games scratched into paving stones, and some eight-spoked wheels occur near them. However, other than its board-like aesthetic, there is no direct evidence that the wheel functioned as a game.
More often than games, eight-spoked wheels appear alongside crosses, including at temples of pagan worship. At Delphi, for example, more than 100 crosses and several eight-spoked wheels were carved on the former altar of this Temple of Apollo. At Didyma, wheels occur alongside crosses, and one particularly striking example has a cross in each of its eight segments. Similar combinations occur at Aphrodisias and Sardis.
An especially fascinating example derives from the fourth-century Villa of the Quintili (south of Rome), where an eight-spoked wheel was found inscribed with the Greek word ΙΧΘΥC, ICHTHUS. Hays writes:
There is strong evidence that [the eight-spoked wheel] represents the Greek word ΙΧΘΥC (ICHTHUS), “fish,” which early Christians used as an acrostic (each letter standing for a word), for the phrase “Jesus Christ, God’s Son (and the) Savior” (Ἰησοῦς Χριστός θεοῦ Υἱός Cωτήρ). Beginning around AD 200, this cryptic reference to Jesus appears frequently on Christian funerary monuments, jewelry, and church mosaics, often together with crosses and other Christian symbols.
Another example comes from a house church at Laodicea (western Turkey), which has a fish-shaped design and an eight-spoked wheel depicted on the same floor.
Hays connects the eight-spoked wheel to the Christianization of the Roman world: “Strengthened by imperial support and armed with increasingly forceful imperial decrees, Christians worked fervently to ‘Christianize’ pagan spaces throughout the fourth century and into the early fifth century.”
From the perspective of religious studies, there is a fascinating twist. The eight-spoked wheel is a famous Buddhist symbol. Travel thousands of miles east, and the dharmachakra, or the Wheel of Dharma, serves as an emblem of the Noble Eightfold Path, the path taught by the Buddha for attaining enlightenment (nirvana).
Gold coin from Tillya Tepe in modern northern Afghanistan, dated between 50 BCE–50 CE, featuring an eight-spoked wheel (housed at Kabul Museum). Credit: Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY 4.0.
The Eightfold Path is the fourth of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths: 1) suffering exists; 2) it arises from craving and attachment; 3) suffering can cease; 4) the Buddha teaches a path leading to its cessation. That path consists of eight interrelated practices—right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
The Buddha is understood to have set the “Wheel of Dharma” in motion when he delivered his first sermon. The wheel also connects Buddhist thought with an older Indian image of the chakravartin, the “wheel-turning” universal ruler.
Wheel imagery associated with Buddhist teaching appears in the earliest surviving Buddhist artistic traditions, including monuments connected with the emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE. At Sanchi (India) and elsewhere, the wheel could represent the Buddha and his teaching before Buddhist artists began regularly portraying the Buddha in human form.
The wheel also provides an apt visualization of Buddhist understandings of existence. Ordinary existence is characterized in Buddhist thought by the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, called samsara. The circular movement of the wheel evokes this seemingly endless cycle. The Buddha taught that the Noble Eightfold Path offers a path toward liberation from samsara. In the imagery of the wheel, the practitioner can be imagined as moving from the restless circumference toward its hub, i.e., its unmoving, peaceful center. Buddhist art and practice invest the wheel with deep spiritual meaning, using it as a map of spiritual transformation that points to liberation.
Christianity and Buddhism do not teach the same things, and we cannot force one tradition’s symbolism into the other’s. The Buddhist wheel does not secretly point to Jesus, and the older Buddhist tradition does not demonstrate that the Mediterranean wheels must have had the same origin. The historical evidence points to a Buddhist symbol with a long South Asian history and a proposed Christian symbol appearing in a very different time and place.
Nonetheless, it is striking that, across time and space, a simple circular form communicated ideas so difficult to express in regular language. In Buddhism, the wheel can represent the Buddha’s teaching, the Eightfold Path, the turning of Dharma, and the possibility of escaping the cycle of suffering. In the Christian interpretation, the wheel may have functioned as a coded visual proclamation of Jesus as Savior and as God’s Son, especially when placed alongside crosses and the ΙΧΘΥC acrostic.
Subscribers: For more on the eight-spoked wheel in Christian contexts, read the full article, “Gambler’s Game or Christian Cryptogram?” by J. Daniel Hays in the Fall 2026 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
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Lauren K. McCormick is an assistant editor at Biblical Archaeology Review and a specialist in ancient Near Eastern religions, visual culture, and the Bible. She holds degrees in religion from Syracuse University, Duke University, New York University, and Rutgers University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on religion and the public conversation at Princeton University.
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What did fishing nets look like back then? Since the ICTHUS is a fish symbol and the many references to fishing in the Gospels, could the circle have become a Christian symbol via a fishing metaphor?
Hi Dennis, and what a creative thought! It turns out that there is a BAR article “Cast Your Net Upon the Waters: Fish and Fishermen in Jesus’ Time”” discussing this exactly 🙂 One one major type of net used in the first century Galilea was indeed circular:
“A second kind of net, a cast net, is used by a single fisherman. It is circular, about 20 to 25 feet in diameter, with lead sinkers attached to the edge. The fisherman arranges the net on his right arm and, standing in shallow water or in a boat, throws it on the water, where it is pulled down like a parachute by the lead, finally sinking to the bottom. There are two ways of retrieving the catch. The fisherman may dive down to the net, pull the fish through the meshing one by one and put them into a pouch. Or he may gather all the lead sinkers together, lifting the edges carefully over the bottom. He then takes the net up into the boat with the catch inside. When cast from shallow water, and especially if the catch is heavy, the net is dragged to the shore.”
link to article: https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/article/cast-your-net-upon-the-waters-fish-and-fishermen-in-jesus-time/