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.

In some stories of Perseus, after killing Medusa, the hero used winged sandals to transport her head to King Polydectes.

[5] 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 pain.

[6] Some believe it to have been a horned viper,[3][7] though in 2010, German historian Christoph Schaefer and toxicologist Dietrich Mebs, after extensive study into the event, came to the conclusion that rather than enticing a venomous animal to bite her, Cleopatra actually used a mixture of hemlock, wolfsbane and opium to end her life.

[8] Nonetheless, the image of suicide-by-asp has become inextricably connected with Cleopatra, as immortalized by William Shakespeare: With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate Of life at once untie: poor venomous fool Be angry, and dispatch.