Gold and metallics

Dubai is called the City of Gold for its gold souk, a market of hundreds of jewellers. Much of what is sold is bridal jewellery for South Asian and Arab families.

The golden Sun of May at the centre of the flag recalls the May Revolution of 1810. Its face is linked with Inti, the Inca sun god.

Gold stands for wealth. It is paired with red on New Year decorations, wedding invitations and shop signs to wish for a prosperous year.

The Muisca made offerings of gold figures to the gods at Lake Guatavita. The ritual of a new ruler covered in gold dust gave rise to the legend of El Dorado.

The black, red and gold flag goes back to the democratic movement of the early 1800s and the 1848 revolutions. The colours are often traced to the uniforms of the Lutzow volunteers who fought Napoleon.

The ancient Egyptians held that the flesh of the gods was gold, which never tarnishes. Royal coffins and masks, like Tutankhamun's, were made of it.

Gold is the colour of Asante kingship. The Golden Stool holds the soul of the nation, and in kente cloth gold threads stand for royalty and wealth.

Orthodox icons and church mosaics set their figures against a ground of gold. It stands for the light of heaven, not for any earthly place.

The state's arms are a gold harp with silver strings on a blue field. The harp appears on coins, passports and government papers.

Gold jewellery is bought on Dhanteras and Akshaya Tritiya, two days held to be lucky for it. A bride's gold is both ornament and her own store of wealth.

Rastafari use red, gold and green, taken from the flag of Ethiopia, the home of Emperor Haile Selassie. The colours appear on hats, flags and reggae record sleeves.

The silver fern, whose fronds are pale silver underneath, is the national emblem. It is worn on a black ground by sports teams and marks the graves of soldiers abroad.

For the Incas gold was the sweat of the sun and silver the tears of the moon. Both were kept for the gods and the ruler, not used as money.

Talha dourada is carved wood covered in gold leaf. It lines the altars of baroque churches in Porto and Lisbon, and much of the gold came from Brazil in the 1700s.

The onion domes of Orthodox churches are often gilded. Gold stands for the glory of heaven, and by tradition blue domes with stars mark churches of the Mother of God.

A gold star stands for a family member killed in military service. The custom began in the First World War, when families changed the blue star on a window banner to gold.

The flag has nine blue and white stripes for the first nine departments and a golden Sun of May with a face, a sign of independence shared with Argentina.

The black, green and gold of the African National Congress stand for the people, the land and the mineral wealth under it.

The golden bird on the flag is the Zimbabwe Bird, copied from soapstone carvings found in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe.