A sextant can be used to obtain the relative horizontal angle between two landmarks, but it is much easier to use an azimuth ring. A sextant is designed to be used vertically. Holding and using one horizontally is difficult and time-consuming in comparison and is probably a less than a 1% use case, used only during the training of apprentices as a theoretical exercise (source: professional mariner for many years and daily user of a sextant back in the day). A comparison would be using a screwdriver to drive in a nail; you could do it given enough time, but a hammer is much easier.
I believe the explanation is much simpler: the glyph simply represents a variety of angles measured from north (the common meaning of azimuth) avoiding the use of any lettering (like “N”) or the use of a compass-like symbol which would be difficult to represent at such small scale.
Also (pedant warning for another poster) Polaris is not the brightest star, it’s around the 40th and has no practical use for navigation other than “north is roughly that way”.
This reminds me of another Unicode block with ancient origins: the 64 I Ching hexagrams (U+4DC0–U+4DFF). Unlike ⍼, their meaning has been documented for 4,000 years — yet they carry their own encoding surprise. Unicode actually follows the traditional King Wen sequence: U+4DC0 is ䷀ (Heaven, #1) and U+4DC1 is ䷁ (Earth, #2). Interestingly, this is different from the binary Fu Xi arrangement formalized by Shao Yong (邵雍, 1011–1077), where ䷁ (000000) comes first and ䷀ (111111) last — the very diagram that captivated Leibniz in 1703 as a mirror of binary arithmetic [1][2]. Two valid orderings, encoding two different philosophies of where to begin: with pure creation, or with pure potential.
By the way, DNA also produces exactly 64 codons (4³ = (2²)³ = 2⁶) — the same number. Some have even noted functional echoes: DNA has start and stop codons that initiate and terminate translation; the hexagrams have corresponding structural counterparts [3]. Probably coincidence. Probably.
[1] https://leibniz-bouvet.swarthmore.edu/letters/letter-j-18-ma... [2] https://leibniz-translations.com/binary [3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/78369.The_I_Ching_and_th...
In the case of the i-ching it's literally six bits of binary (expressed in yarrow stalks).
In genetic codons there's four symbols instead of two, and three places instead of six, so the effect is the same. (Does base 4 have a name?)
Quaternary
Maybe this is the opportunity to invent and suggest a symbol for Altitude?
Consider the Moon as viewed from NYC at time of comment [0], it is hiding below the horizon. If you were to look at my website and then at the sky you might become upset that I am reporting the shape of the moon, but obviously it can't be seen. Hence why the website reports the angle below the horizon roughly half the time it isn't visible.
Adding Azimuth and Elevation when the Moon is above the horizon would be for completionism only and not the real enterprise use-cases served by ANSI compliant renderings of the Moon.
[0] https://aleyan.com/projects/ascii-side-of-the-moon/?lat=40.7...
Every once in a while you run into something like this and realize the standard is not just for text encoding but also a kind of archive of specialized notation from different fields.
It makes you wonder how many other symbols are sitting in the table that are still mostly unknown outside the niche communities that originally needed them.
Unicode's entire point being to make "normal software" handle those symbols ;)
For years Ł support on Python on windows for example broke sometimes when imported from poor quality Excel files haha
Ah, of course :)
A lot of old German sailor maps (e.g. from the Hamburg or Bremen maritime museum exhibitions) contain Azimutal angle descriptions. The globe on an azimutal map is projected from the North Star in the center.
This way you could more easily calculate the angles you would need to use the Sextant (which was focused on the brightest star, the North star). They also used circles (the tool) to calculate relative speeds, current drift etc with it.
I thought this was kind of common knowledge, as a lot of museums have that sorta thing for children in their exhibitions to try out.
The article quotes the Didot system, specifically, which focused on printing travel maps and is known not only in the French speaking world for its timely accuracy [1] as it was also using that very same map system.
Maybe read the article next time?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didot_family
[2] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoire_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale_de...
Neither the wikipedia page for the Didot family, nor for Histoire générale des voyages shows the Angzarr symbol, I've carefully checked on all the scans on these pages. In fact, any occurrence of the symbol would pre-date the current earliest known example (1963) by 200 years, and that would be a great find. If you have an actual reference, please let us know!