The Enduring Symbolism of the Serpent

On the serpent's long and winding life as a symbol

Symbols & Origins 

There is no symbol more ambivalent than the snake. The serpent appears in nearly every culture that has left a record of its beliefs, and almost nowhere does it mean the same thing twice. It is divine and dangerous, healing and lethal, a guardian at the threshold and the force that undoes it. 

The earliest evidence we have is in stone. Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey is a Neolithic archaeological site in southeastern Turkey, built by hunter-gatherers thousands of years before Stonehenge or the pyramids.

Archaeologists have uncovered serpent carvings dating back nearly 11,000 years, appearing on massive T-shaped pillars arranged in ceremonial enclosures. This predates writing, agriculture, and urban settlement. Whatever the snake meant to the people who carved it there, it mattered enough to be inscribed in stone at the very beginning of organized human life and suggests that the serpent already held a powerful place in the symbolic world of these early communities.

Pillar 56 in Building H is adorned with low reliefs of wild animals, reptiles and birds covering its entire south-facing broad side, © DAI, Göbekli Tepe Project

Uraeus

Power & Protection

In ancient Egypt, the cobra embodied both protection and power. The goddess Wadjet, patroness of Lower Egypt, was often represented as the uraeus, the rearing cobra worn on the crowns of pharaohs. Positioned at the ruler’s forehead and poised to strike, she was believed to protect the pharaoh from enemies, even destroying them with her fiery breath.

The cobra’s symbolism held an inherent duality: the same creature capable of delivering a lethal strike became one of the most powerful emblems of divine protection. After the unification of Egypt, she appeared alongside the vulture goddess Nekhbet, the two becoming protectors of the kingdom.

GOLD URAEUS (COBRA), ANCIENT EGYPT · C. 945–721 BCE · THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

Ouroboros

The Eternal Return

Egypt also gave us the ouroboros: the serpent consuming its own tail. Its earliest known depiction appears in a funerary text from the tomb of Tutankhamun, where it evoked the beginning and end of time, destruction and creation. With no visible beginning or end, the ouroboros suggests that endings are also beginnings, and that creation, destruction and renewal are part of the same continuous cycle. The symbol traveled widely, eventually appearing in Greek alchemy and other traditions as an emblem of eternity, rebirth, and the endless cycle of transformation.

GOLD URAEUS (COBRA), ANCIENT EGYPT · C. 945–721 BCE · THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

In Greece, the serpent became closely associated with healing. Asclepius, god of medicine, carried a staff entwined by a snake, and serpents moved freely through the healing sanctuaries dedicated to him. The symbolism was intuitive: the snake sheds its skin and emerges renewed. That association survives today in the Rod of Asclepius, still an emblem of medicine.

Shahmaran, Queen of Serpents

Wisdom & The Feminine

Closer to home, the serpent takes the form of feminine wisdom. Unsurprisingly, this is the meaning that resonates most deeply with me. Shahmaran is one of the most captivating figures in the folklore of the region spanning present-day Turkey, Iran, and neighboring lands. Her name comes from the Persian shah, meaning king, and maran, snakes, though she is unmistakably feminine: the Queen of Serpents. Half woman, half snake, she is an ancient and wise figure who lives in a hidden realm beneath the earth.

In one version of the story, a young man named Camsab discovers Shahmaran’s underground kingdom, where she rules over a peaceful realm of serpents. He lives there for years before eventually returning to the surface, carrying with him the secret of her whereabouts. When a ruler falls ill, that secret is betrayed and Shahmaran is killed. Yet even in death, she remains a source of knowledge: different parts of her body carry poison, healing, and wisdom.

For centuries, images of Shahmaran have appeared in homes across southeastern Anatolia and beyond, particularly in Kurdish and Alevi communities, as symbols of protection, wisdom, abundance, and good fortune. Her image appears in paintings, textiles, glasswork, and embroidery, sometimes incorporated into a bride’s dowry.

I grew up in Turkey, where Shahmaran appears in bazaars and on walls, in tile work and miniature paintings. Like so many symbols that survive across centuries, she has gathered meanings without losing her essence: the snake as keeper, the serpent as the one who knows.

TRADITIONAL ŞAHMARAN REVERSE-GLASS (CAMALTI) PAINTING · MARDIN, TURKEY

The Symbol that Holds

Today, the serpent remains a symbol of transformation and resilience: of shedding what came before and emerging changed. In Victorian mourning jewelry, the ouroboros represented eternal love between the dead and those left behind. Now, snakes appear on rings, pendants, and bodies for reasons that are often entirely personal, markers of loss, change, renewal, or the symbolic crossing of a threshold.

To me, the most enduring symbols leave room for personal meaning while remaining tethered to something larger. Across history, the snake has been divine and dangerous, protector and deceiver, an emblem of healing and a force of chaos. It has survived because it refuses a single meaning. Still worn, still carved, still meaningful, the serpent continues to hold whatever we ask of it.

Meet Ophidia