Ancient Egypt · Valley of the Kings, Egypt
Ouroboros
Also known as Uroboros, Tail-devourer
A serpent with its tail in its mouth makes a circle with no beginning and no end. From an Egyptian king’s tomb to Greek alchemy, it has stood for eternity, renewal and the unity of all things.
The ouroboros is a serpent, sometimes a dragon, that takes its own tail in its mouth and so becomes a circle. It is one of the simplest images ever devised for eternity, and one of the most travelled: from an Egyptian king’s tomb to the notebooks of Greek alchemists and the jewellery of the nineteenth century.
Where it comes from
The earliest known example comes from the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, around 1325 BCE. On one of the gilded shrines that enclosed his sarcophagus, a funerary text shows a large mummy-shaped figure circled by two serpents, each holding its tail in its mouth: one around the head and chest, the other around the feet.
The king’s burial chamber held four such shrines, fitted one inside another like nested boxes, their gilded walls covered with scenes and texts for the journey through the night. Among so much splendour, the two quiet circles are easy to miss, yet they are the start of a very long story.
The figure is often read as the sun god Ra united with Osiris, the god of the dead, and the serpents as forms of , a coiled guardian who protects the sun on its journey through the night. The circle keeps watch over a moment of renewal, when the old sun becomes the new one.
Egyptian religion was full of protective coiling serpents, so the image grew from older ideas. The name came much later and is Greek, from words meaning “tail” and “devouring”, given by writers in Egypt under Greek and Roman rule.
What it means
Because it feeds on itself, the ouroboros suggests a world that renews itself from within: endings that become beginnings, seasons that return, time that turns rather than runs out. It can also stand for wholeness, a single creature that contains its own beginning and end.
A circle with a mouth at one end and a tail at the other, it ends exactly where it begins.
In the Roman period a tail-biting serpent often framed the images on engraved amulet gems, enclosing them in a protective ring. The late antique writer Horapollo, in a book on the meaning of hieroglyphs, described a serpent eating its own tail as the Egyptian sign for the universe.
The ouroboros in alchemy
Greek practitioners of in Roman and Byzantine Egypt made the ouroboros one of their emblems. A famous drawing in the alchemical text known as the Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra shows the serpent around the Greek words hen to pan, “the all is one”.
For these writers the circle described the endless cycle of transformation they hoped to understand: matter dissolving and forming again, nothing lost, everything changed. Medieval and Renaissance alchemical books kept the image, often as a winged dragon swallowing its own tail.
The serpent later found a famous scientific echo. The chemist August Kekulé recalled, many years afterwards, a daydream in which a snake seized its own tail, an image he connected with his idea of the ring-shaped benzene molecule.
Variations and relatives
- Jörmungandr: in Norse myth the world serpent lies in the ocean around the earth, so long that it grips its own tail.
- Serpent jewellery: nineteenth century rings and bracelets often show a snake coiled in a circle, given as tokens of lasting love.
- The Scarab: an Egyptian cousin in meaning, another image of the sun renewed each day.
- The Triskele and the Endless Knot: other unbroken lines that speak of continuity in very different cultures.
What links these images is the refusal of a dead end. Each one draws the eye round and round, and invites the thought that what seems finished may simply be turning a corner.
Wearing it today
The ouroboros suits forms that are already circles: rings, bangles, cuffs and round pendants. It is often chosen to mark an anniversary, a return to something loved or the close of one chapter and the start of another.
It is not the sacred emblem of any major living faith, so you can wear it freely as a sign of continuity and renewal. Gold and silver both suit it, and a simple polished band lets the serpent’s outline speak for itself.
Rings with finely chased scales gather dust in their grooves, so a soft brush and a dry cloth will keep the detail crisp. Our guide to caring for your talisman has more gentle methods for gold and silver.
If you enjoy its company, explore our talismans for renewal and talismans for wisdom, or return to its first home among the talismans of ancient Egypt. A small circle on the finger is a gentle reminder that most endings are also beginnings.
taliaris describes beliefs and customs; it makes no claim that a talisman has an effect.