Also called crux ansata, key of life, Egyptian cross
The ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for life, a cross with a loop at the top, carried by gods in art and worn by the living and buried with the dead as an amulet for health, safety and rebirth.
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Take care: Buy replicas or antiquities with clear legal provenance; the trade in looted Egyptian objects is a real problem. This is a modern devotional echo of ancient practice, not a reconstruction of temple rites.
Small ankhs of faience and other materials were placed among a mummy's wrappings so that the dead person would live again in the afterlife. One blue faience ankh in Cairo was set beside the mummy for this purpose.
Some amulets join the ankh with the djed pillar (stability), the was sceptre (dominion) and the heh sign (millions of years) into one piece, spelling out a wish for life, endurance and power. The British Museum's example came from a temple rather than a tomb.
Egyptian Christians adapted the ankh as a form of the cross, often with a round rather than tear-shaped loop. It appears on Coptic textiles and grave stelae, carrying the old meaning of life into the new faith of eternal life.
The ankh is among the oldest Egyptian signs, appearing from the Early Dynastic Period. Egyptologists still debate what object it originally showed; suggestions include a sandal strap or a knotted band, and none is certain. What matters is its sound value: it spells the word for life. In tomb and temple art gods such as Osiris, Isis and Ra hold it, offer it to kings and queens, or pour streams of ankhs over them to show life flowing from the divine.
As an amulet it was worn by the living for health and safety and placed with the dead to secure rebirth, made of faience, gold, silver, wood and stone. Ankh-shaped mirrors and vessels used the same idea. In the 1960s and 1970s the ankh became popular in Western counterculture and later among African diaspora communities as a sign of heritage, and it remains one of the most widely worn ancient symbols today.
An open right hand, often with an eye in the palm, hung in the home or worn to push back the evil eye and bless a household.
An ancient Egyptian amulet carved as a dung beetle, the creature of the sunrise god Khepri, worn for renewal and good fortune and, as the large heart scarab, laid on mummies to keep the heart from speaking against its owner at judgment.
An ancient Egyptian symbol of the falcon god Horus's eye, torn out by Seth and restored by Thoth, worn as one of Egypt's most popular amulets for healing, wholeness and protection by the living and the dead.
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