Editing Ouroboros (section)

=== Ancient Egypt ===
One of the earliest known ouroboros [[motif (narrative)|motifs]] is found in the ''[[Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld]]'', an [[ancient Egyptian funerary text]] in [[KV62]], the tomb of [[Tutankhamun]], in the 14th century BCE. The text concerns the actions of [[Ra]] and his union with [[Osiris]] in the [[Duat|underworld]]. The ouroboros is depicted twice on the figure: holding their tails in their mouths, one encircling the head and upper chest, the other surrounding the feet of a large figure, which may represent the unified Ra-Osiris ([[Osiris]] born again as [[Ra]]). Both serpents are manifestations of the deity [[Mehen]], who in other funerary texts protects Ra in his underworld journey. The whole divine figure represents the beginning and the end of time.<ref>Hornung, Erik. ''The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife''. [[Cornell University Press]], 1999. pp. 38, 77–78</ref>

The ouroboros appears elsewhere in Egyptian sources, where, like many Egyptian serpent deities, it represents the formless disorder that surrounds the orderly world and is involved in that world's periodic renewal.<ref>{{cite book|author=Hornung, Erik|title=Conceptions of God in Egypt: The One and the Many | publisher= Cornell University Press|year= 1982| pages=163–64}}</ref> The symbol persisted from Egyptian into [[Roman Egypt|Roman times]], when it frequently appeared on magical [[talisman]]s, sometimes in combination with other magical emblems.{{Sfn | Hornung | 2002 | p = 58}} The 4th-century CE Latin commentator [[Maurus Servius Honoratus|Servius]] was aware of the Egyptian use of the symbol, noting that the image of a snake biting its tail represents the cyclical nature of the year.<ref>[[Maurus Servius Honoratus|Servius]], note to ''[[Aeneid]]'' 5.85: "according to the Egyptians, before the invention of the alphabet the year was symbolized by a picture, a serpent biting its own tail because it recurs on itself" ''(annus secundum Aegyptios indicabatur ante inventas litteras picto dracone caudam suam mordente, quia in se recurrit)'', as cited by Danuta Shanzer, ''A Philosophical and Literary Commentary on Martianus Capella's ''De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii'' Book 1'' (University of California Press, 1986), p. 159.</ref>