"Cerastes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as the letter F itself; and the reason why we have the barred cross-piece in the F, the two horns in U, V, and Y, and the four in W (VV) is because the Egyptian asp had two horns, as may be seen from the illustration in the Century Dictionary under the word cerastes; and every time that we write one of these letters we are making a faded copy of the old picture. We find systems of writing in all the stages from pure pictures to the phonetic alphabet; in Egyptian hieroglyphics we find a mixture of all the stages. So much for the ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... it not in mind because my eye had wholly attracted me toward the high tower with the ruddy summit, where in an instant were uprisen suddenly three infernal furies, stained with blood, who had the limbs of women and their action, and were girt with greenest hydras. Little serpents and cerastes they had for hair, wherewith their savage ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... passed in their journey from Egypt to Phoenicia, from Phoenicia to Greece, from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England, when we write a capital F [Cursive F], when we draw the top line and the smaller line through the middle of the letter, we really draw the two horns of the cerastes, the horned serpent, which the ancient Egyptians used for representing the sound of f. They write the name of the king whom the Greeks called Cheops, and ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... innumerable tongues, A dismal universal hiss, the sound Of public scorn. Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters, head and tail, Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various |
