Ouroboros symbol is an ancient symbol that had mystified philosophers for centuries. It’s an image of a serpent or a dragon biting its tail.  This is a mysterious symbol that represents the major concepts of life and nature, in addition, the unity of things and recreation.

The Meaning of the Ouroboros Symbol

The term is very ancient. It’s derived from a Greek word that means tail-devourer. It represents eternity and the cycle of life and death. This symbol was mentioned in many ancient cultures. It was a secret that provoked many ancient civilizations to reveal its secrets. The Ouroboros symbol entered other cultures through ancient Egyptian iconography.

In ancient cultures, the Ouroboros Symbol had several meanings which were the destructive power of nature, the creation of a new life as well as the concept of eternity and beginning of the end.

Ouroboros symbol.

Mythology of the Ouroboros

The Ouroboros Symbol is depicted as a serpent called Jörmungandr, one of the three offspring of Loki and Angrboda. It grew so large that it could encircle the world and bite its tail. According to the legends of Ragnar Lodbrok, the Geatish king Herraud gives his daughter Þóra Town-Hart a small lindworm as a gift, but it grows into a giant serpent that coils around the girl’s bower and bites its tail. Ragnar Lodbrok kills the serpent and marries Þóra. Later, Ragnar has a son named Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye with another woman named Kráka. this son is born as white snake in one eye, which encircles the iris and bites its tail.

Ouroboros in Ancient Egyptian Symbolism

Ourobors Symbol It is one of the oldest Egyptian symbols. It was originated around 1600 BC. Then it was adopted by many other ancient cultures. This symbol first appeared in the tomb of Tutankhamen in the 14th century. This symbol is mentioned in The Book of the Dead. In this book, there were images of a snake related to the god Atum. It’s believed that the snake renewed itself every day. 

Ouroboros symbol.

Ouroboros in Ancient Egyptian Art and Myth

According to the Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld, an ancient Egyptian funerary manuscript discovered in KV62, Tutankhamun’s tomb from the fourteenth century BCE, contains one of the first known ouroboros themes. The deeds of God Ra and his underworld union with Osiris are the subject of the text. The figure has two representations of the ouroboros: one encircling the head and upper chest of the figure with their tails in their mouths, and the other surrounding the feet of a gigantic figure that could be the unified Ra-Osiris (Osiris reborn as Ra).

The two serpents are representations of the goddess Mehen, who in other funeral scriptures guards Ra during his descent into the underworld. The beginning and the end of time are represented by the entire heavenly form. Throughout Egyptian sources, the ouroboros is mentioned. Like many other Egyptian snake deities, it symbolizes the formless chaos that envelops the ordered world and plays a role in its cyclical regeneration.

From Egyptian periods throughout the Roman era, the symbol endured and was often found on talismans, sometimes combined with other magical symbols. The employment of the sign by the Egyptians was noted by the fourth-century CE Latin scholar Servius, who pointed out that the representation of a snake biting its tail symbolizes the cyclical pattern of the year.

Ouroboros symbol.

A common interpretation of the ouroboros is as a representation of an endless cycle of rebirth or a cycle of life, death, and rebirth; the snake’s skin-sloughing represents the transmigration of souls. In several religions, the image of a snake biting its own tail represents fertility; the mouth represents a womb, and the tail is phallic.