Flag of Greece of alternating blue and white - or silver - stripes on (several centuries-old) Kallergis' coats of arms is well documented, no depiction of the above described pattern (with the nine stripes and the cross) survives. The stripe-pattern of the Greek flag is visibly similar to that used (though with different colors) in several other flags that have appeared over the centuries, most notably that of the British East India Company's pre-1707 flag or the flag of the United States. Flags as they are known today did not exist in antiquity. Instead, a variety of emblems and symbols ("semeion", pl. "semeia")
Flag of the Soviet Union statute on the flag was adopted which resulted in a change of the hammer's handle length and the shape of the sickle. A final modification to the flag was adopted in 1980 in which the colour was brightened to a lighter shade of red. The flag continued to be the official national flag until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Its imagery is now the basis for the flags of many communist parties: a yellow hammer and sickle on a red background. The flag of the Soviet Union consisted of a plain red flag with a gold hammer crossed with