Ankh

The ankh is the most famous of Egyptian symbols — a looped cross signifying 'life'. In temple and tomb the gods hold the ankh to the nose of the pharaoh, giving him the breath of life, and carry it as the sign of their power to bestow and sustain living being.

As the emblem of life given by the divine — the eternal life the gods grant and the dead hope to regain — the ankh became one of the enduring images of Egypt, later taken up by the Christians of Egypt as a form of the cross and woven through the whole later Hermetic and esoteric tradition of symbols.