The Serpent on the Roman coins – an Analytical and Comparative study to its equivalents in ancient Egypt

Ali Abbas Mohamed, Fatma; Wazery, Ayman; Zaki Hamed, Ezat

doi:10.21608/ijaswa.2022.248419

The Serpent on the Roman coins – an Analytical and Comparative study to its equivalents in ancient Egypt

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Curator the Egyptian museum, Tahrer square

² Professor and Head of the Department of Egyptian Archeology - Faculty of Archeology - Fayoum University

³ Professor of Greco-Roman Archeology - Faculty of Arts - Alexandria University

10.21608/ijaswa.2022.248419

Abstract

The serpent amazed the ancients with its strange qualities; it was
sanctified in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia and
other countries. It was also associated with many Greek and
Roman deities, for example Asclepius the god of medicine and
his daughter Hygea the personification of healing and her Roman
counterpart Salus, as well as the god Hermes, the messenger of
the gods. The serpent was expressing the guardian spirit in the
Greek religion and also the Roman, and there were known sorts
of serpents in Greece that were protecting houses, so the Greeks
opened their houses to host the serpents which considered the
good or guardian spirits and called Agathodaimon, and the
Agathodemon was mentioned for the first Once with Alexandria,
where he was linked to the construction of the city and
considered the guardian spirit of the city of Alexandria, also
serpents associated with many Egyptian deities such as the
goddess Wajit and others, some of them represent the good and
others represent the evil.

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