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

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.