Asp (snake)
"Asp" is the modern anglicisation of the word "aspis", which in antiquity referred to any one of several venomous snake species found in the Nile region. The specific epithet, aspis, is a Greek word that means "viper". It is believed that aspis referred to what is now known as the Egyptian cobra. Historic representation Throughout dynastic and Roman Egypt, the asp was a symbol of royalty. Moreover, in both Egypt and Greece, its potent venom made it useful as a means of execution for criminals who were thought deserving of a more dignified death than that of typical executions. In some stories of Perseus, after killing Medusa, the hero used winged sandals to transport her head to King Polydectes. As he was flying over Egypt, some of her blood fell to the ground, which spawned asps and amphisbaena. According to Plutarch, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, in preparing for her own suicide, tested various deadly poisons on condemned people and concluded that the bite of the asp (from the Greek word aspis, usually meaning an Egyptian cobra in Ptolemaic Egypt, and not the European asp) was the least terrible way to die; the venom brought sleepiness and heaviness without spasms of