If you visit Athens, you’ll find several common items at souvenir shops: bottles of luxury olive oil, olive wood cutting boards, reproductions of ancient pottery, and snake bracelets. One of these last, slender, silver, and meant to be worn midway up the forearm, caught my eye on a vacation, in a shop outside the Acropolis in the Plaka district.

Ellery Weir
Snake bracelets are one of the oldest forms of representational jewelry, which takes the form of a plant, animal, or other defined being or feature. The oldest snake bracelets date to the eighth century BCE, along with other animal-motif bracelets that archaeologists have found in western Asia. By the fifth century BCE, the snake bracelet had made its way to Greece, where snakes were associated with healing. That association lives on today in the caduceus, a symbol of medicine that appears on modern medical equipment but can be traced to Greek mythology.
While the Egyptian pharaohs famously wore crowns adorned with snakes, snake bracelets from what is now Egypt date back only to the Ptolemaic dynasty (305–30 BCE). The Romans, who maintained close ties to the Ptolemaic pharaohs, too, wore snake bracelets. At this time in Egyptian tradition, snakes were associated with Nehebkau, a magical serpent and companion of Ra, whose name was invoked for protection, or perhaps with the protective serpents that slithered through the Egyptian underworld.
Representational jewelry in Europe was less popular during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but enjoyed a revival with the Georgians in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, including the return of the snake bracelet. The Victorian era saw another resurgence in snake jewelry, particularly in the form of bracelets. Queen Victoria herself had a serpent engagement ring, which only furthered the trend.
In the 20th century, snake bracelets were considered, erroneously, a trendy piece of “Egyptian revival” jewelry, especially after the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb brought Egyptomania to Britain, the United States, and continental Europe. Worn on the upper arm, wrist, or forearm, a snake bracelet became a mark of sophistication and worldliness.
The most daring, and most on trend, took it a step further—the American socialite Jennie Jerome (1854–1921), who later married Lord Randolph Churchill and was the mother of Winston Churchill, had a permanent snake bracelet, in the form of a tattoo on her wrist. She was one of multiple wealthy aristocratic British women with snake tattoos, and while the future Lady Churchill’s tattoo was discreet enough to be hidden by a well-placed glove sleeve, railroad heiress Aimée Crocker (1864–1941) had multiple tattooed snakes slithering around her forearm.
Today, you can buy a snake bracelet from an antique dealer or a contemporary jeweler—like the one I bought in Athens. Snake bracelets come in silver, gold, and base metals. Some are beautiful, but they can also be symbolic. For all the negative associations people have with serpents, snake bracelets have meant healing, and love, and eternity. When we look at snake bracelets, modern or historical, and when we wear them, they can remind us of our past—but they, with their changing and surprising meanings, can also be a symbol of things to come. They can be a reminder of how all of us, like a snake shedding its skin, have the power to grow.
Ellery Weil is a historian and writer who holds a PhD in history from University College London.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Attribution must provide author name, article title, Perspectives on History, date of publication, and a link to this page. This license applies only to the article, not to text or images used here by permission.