signsThe fishΙΧΘΥΣ

said ikh-THOOS

also: ichthys · ichthus · Jesus fish · fish charm · yu

signThe LevantAnatoliaRome and ItalyGreece and the AegeanChinaAotearoa New ZealandTurkey Italy Greece Syria Israel China New Zealandconfidence mediumneeds checking

A fish in outline, usually two curved strokes crossing at the tail. In Christian use the Greek letters ΙΧΘΥΣ are sometimes written inside it. In China it is cast as a coin charm shaped like a fish and hung on a child. In Aotearoa the related shape is not a fish but the hook that catches one.

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When

2nd century CE to now still carried cited

Period	2nd century CE onward
How the date is known	art-historical — dated by style
Note	First appearances in Christian art and literature date to the second century CE, with widespread use by the late second to fourth. The Chinese fish charm is dated only by the Han-onward history of the charm coin and is not used for from_year.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The thing itself

Form	Pendant
Made of	Copper and bronze · Silver · Stone, unspecified
Goes	At the neck · In the grave · On a wall · In a vehicle
It says	ΙΧΘΥΣ; on funerary stelae, ΙΧΘΥϹ ΖΩΝΤΩΝ, fish of the living (Greek)

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

Harm to a child — harm to an infant or a small child; common across the atlas, though not the largest class in it — see /story/most-of-them-are-for-children/ citedsaid by Chinese practice, in which fish and lock charms were worn mainly by young children and infants
Danger to the dead — charms put in a grave for the person in it citedsaid by early Christian funerary use — the sign is cut on stelae and in catacombs

The story

The Christian fish is an acrostic before it is an animal. ΙΧΘΥΣ spells out Ἰησοῦς Χρῑστός Θεοῦ Υἱός Σωτήρ — Jesus Christ, God's Son, Saviour. It appears in Christian art and literature from the second century CE and is widespread by the late second to fourth. It is found in the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian and the Catacomb of Priscilla, in the marble ruins of Ephesus, and on funerary stelae carrying inscriptions such as ΙΧΘΥϹ ΖΩΝΤΩΝ, fish of the living.

The story most people have heard about it is disputed. Robert Mowat proposed in 1900 that it was a secret sign among persecuted Christians, arguing from silence. Modern scholarship disputes that: Rasimus lists it among solutions that were once popular, and no early Christian source ties the fish to persecution. The connections the early sources do make are to baptism, to the Eucharist and to the feeding of the multitude.

The fish also turns up on a dated amulet with a word square on its back. The earliest Sator square with explicit Christian imagery is a sixth-century bronze amulet from Asia Minor: two fish turned towards one another on one side, the Sator square in Greek characters on the other, and ICHTHUS written above the square. It is in the Berlin State Museums.

China's fish is a coin. Among the shapes Chinese numismatic charms took as they separated from circulating coinage were spades, locks, fish, peaches and gourds, and fish and lock charms were worn mainly by young children and infants — daily wear rather than festival wear.

Inference — this atlas has not found a source connecting the Christian fish and the Chinese fish charm, and does not connect them. A fish is a common animal and an easy outline; two traditions reaching for it is not evidence of contact.

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