Horned Viper Postcard

The Desert Horned Viper – with its anvil-shaped head, satanic horns and cat-like eyes – has struck a chord in the imagination of those who have lived within its desert ranges, from northern Africa into the Middle East. For example, the snake played a prominent, and sometimes mystical, role in the history of the Egyptians, who embalmed Desert Horned Viper bodies, according to the Greek historian Herodotus. (The snake’s mummies have been discovered at the ancient city of Thebes, on the banks of the Nile River.) The snake’s icon stands for the phonetic sound “f” or “fy” in Egyptian hieroglyphics. A Desert Horned Viper may have been the species that inflicted Cleopatra’s fatal wound when that legendary woman used a serpent to commit suicide in the year 31 B. C., despairing over the imminent Roman conquest of her beloved land (an act immortalised by Shakespeare in Anthony and Cleopatra).