Moldova - Coat of Arms 1993

Arms of Moldova

image by António Martins

From what I have read (an Encyclopedia Americana flag article written by Whitney Smith) the coat of arms is an eagle holding a cross in its beak and an olive branch and sceptre in its claws. On top of the eagle is a shield "per fess" (split in half horizontally) red on top and blue below, with a stylized ox head over all between a rose and a crescent. The eagle is from the old Romanian coat of arms and ultimately from Byzantium; the ox head represents the old province of Bessarabia; the cross is obviously Christian; the sceptre and olive branch are probably for sovereignty and peace; as for the flower and crescent, I have no idea.

Near the bison's head are situated, not a rose and a crescent. Why such strange design? Because, as I know, this is an astral symbol of the sun and the moon taken from Dacian coins (Daci were ancestors of the Moldovans and Romanians in ancient times). Also, the octagonal star above the bison's head is the Dacian symbol of wisdom. The three parts of the eagle's tail represent three part of the Republic of Moldova: Gagauzia (or Gagauz Eri as it calls itself) in the south, the central region as the biggest part, and the breakaway Dniestr region (Transnistria in Romanian or Pridnestrov'e in Russian). And if you compare our coat of arms and the Romanian coat of arms you can see that the Romanian eagle has a sword but our eagle has an olive branch (it's also a difference between the two nations).

The coat of arms of Moldova consists of a stylized eagle holding a cross in its beak and a sceptre and an olive branch in its claws. According to the author of the coat of arms, the eagle symbolizes the Latin origin of the people.^[1]

The chest of the eagle is protected by a shield that bears the traditional insigns of Moldavia: an aurochs head with the sun among its horns. It also contains two rhombi (the ears), a five-petal flower and a moon in a crescent phase. Everything on the shield has one of the three traditional colours: red, yellow, blue.

The coat of arms appears in the centre of the flag of Moldova.