No, the Christian Cross Is Not Based on the Egyptian Ankh

The ankh is a hieroglyphic symbol composed of a T-shape with a loop on top that was used in ancient Egypt to represent the consonant sequence Ꜥ-n-ḫ. The Egyptian word for “life” was composed of this exact sequence of consonants. As a result of this, the ankh became widely used as a symbol for life. People would often wear the symbol on amulets for protection and it was used to decorate shrines, temples, and tombs.

In recent years, a claim has arisen that the Christian cross is, in fact, plagiarized off the Egyptian ankh. Despite its popularity, this claim is almost entirely false, for reasons that I shall explain shortly. Nonetheless, there is a very interesting kernel of truth behind this claim that many of its proponents are not even aware of.

The cross and the ankh

The claim that Christians plagiarized the cross off the Egyptian ankh seems to have a particularly strong niche following among anti-religious black nationalists (apparently those are a thing). For instance, here is a confused rant of a blog post published on a WordPress site in July 2013 that concludes:

“So you wearing the cross, you need to truly understand where it came from and what it actually means. This would be a good time to use your brain, not what you have been guided and brainwashed to believe as fact when it’s not. Again, this change from the Kemet Ankh to the cross was done by man just like the 19th & 20th century pictures of white jesus.”

“Whenever a person has major issues, losing control over people, all they have to do is bring religion in the fold and everything definitely goes directly to hell! So, understand that the idea of the cross was stolen from the ancient Black Africans of Kemet (egypt).”

The claim that the cross is actually based on the ankh is also popular among members of certain Christian religious groups that reject the use of the cross as a symbol, including Jehovah’s Witnesses and members of the Church of the Great God. For instance, here is a post by some guy on Medium claiming that Christians must stop using the cross because it is an evil pagan symbol stolen from the Egyptians and it does not represent Jesus. The article warns:

“The original word used in the original Greek Scripture [for the object Jesus was killed on] is staurō, which may mean a pole, or a stake, or the word xylou, which means tree. […] It is an undisputed fact that Christ did not die on a Cross. It is an undeniable fact that the Ankh predated the Cross. It is an indisputable fact that Christ asked us to teach believers ‘to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you’-Matthew 28:20. So, my question is who taught us to observe the Cross, and to make the sign of the Cross, and to put it in our places of worship? Certainly not God or His Son.”

Unsurprisingly, the things that this article claims are “undisputed facts” are not, in fact, undisputed facts at all.

ABOVE: Illustration by Justus Lipsius of a crux simplex, an upright stake used for crucifixion. Jehovah’s Witnesses and some other Christian religious groups hold that Jesus actually died on a crux simplex and that the cross is a pagan symbol.

Religion and the accusation of “stealing” or “plagiarism”

First of all, although the idea that religions “steal” or “plagiarize” off one another is widespread in popular discourse, this is an extremely inaccurate and oversimplified way of describing religious borrowing.

All religions and all cultures are influenced in some way or another by ideas from other religions and other cultures. There’s nothing immoral, dishonest, or illegal about this. It’s something that just naturally happens. In many cases, cultural borrowing can actually be beneficial. Therefore, there’s no reason to stigmatize it by calling it “theft” or “plagiarism.”

Furthermore, when cultural borrowing does happen, it is rarely ever as simple of someone looking at an idea in someone else’s culture and deciding to “steal” it wholesale and present it as their own without changing it. Usually, it’s more a case of people adapting older ideas from their own culture or ideas from a different culture that they are in contact with into their own pre-existing cultural framework, changing the original idea in the process.

A great example of this are the Greek and Roman deities. It is widely claimed that the Romans “stole” all their deities from the Greeks, but, as I discuss in this article I originally published in September 2019, that’s not at all how it happened. The Romans had their own native deities, but, over time, they came to identify their own deities so closely with the Greek deities that, eventually, they became seen as the same deities with different names. It was a process of religious and cultural syncretism, not “stealing.”

ABOVE: Chart I made showing which Greek and Roman deities were syncretized with each other

Jesus and Horus

Irreligious proponents of the claim that Christians copied the cross off the Egyptian ankh often also claim that Christians “plagiarized” the whole story of Jesus off the Egyptian god Horus. I’ve already written a whole article debunking this claim in-depth, which I highly recommend reading. For those who don’t have time, though, here’s a brief summary of the main points:

• The Book of the Dead is not, in any sense, a “gospel of Horus”; it is a collection of ancient Egyptian magical incantations that were supposed to help dead Egyptians in the afterlife. Horus is only occasionally invoked in it, alongside a whole bunch of other Egyptian deities.

• Horus was not believed in ancient times to have been “born of a virgin.” On the contrary, the most detailed surviving ancient account of his conception, found in Ploutarchos’s treatise Isis and Osiris, says that he was conceived when his mother Isis reassembled her dead husband Osiris’s corpse, attached a magic wooden penis to replace his original penis (which had been eaten by pike), and reanimated the corpse so she could have sex with it. A relief carving on the Temple of Seti I at Abydos shows Isis in the very act of having sex with Osiris’s reanimated corpse to conceive their son Horus. Whatever she was, Isis was no virgin.

• There is no myth in Egyptian mythology in which Horus is baptized, nor is there any figure in Egyptian mythology called “Anup the Baptizer.” Anup is the Coptic name for Anubis, the god of death, who is not associated with baptism in any way and was never said to have been beheaded.

• The Egyptians never imagined Horus as any kind of itinerant preacher going around from town-to-town physically laying his hands on people to heal them and cast out demons.

• There is no story in Egyptian mythology about Horus walking on water.

• “Asar” is a bad transliteration of the name of Horus’s father Osiris. There is no story in Egyptian mythology in which Horus resurrects Osiris from the dead; Osiris is instead said to have been temporarily resuscitated by Horus’s mother Isis in order to conceive him.

• There is no story in Egyptian mythology about Horus having “twelve apostles.” Furthermore, the reason why Jesus had twelve apostles is explicitly stated in the Gospel of Matthew 19:28 to be because Jesus expected each of his apostles to rule over one of the twelve tribes of Israel in the coming Kingdom of Heaven.

• There is no story in Egyptian mythology about Horus being crucified. Furthermore, crucifixion did not even become a common form of execution until the time of the Achaemenid Empire (lasted 550 – 330 BC)—long after the time when the Egyptians first started worshipping Horus.

• Although there is at least one story in Egyptian mythology in which Horus is injured and healed, there is no story in Egyptian mythology in which Horus genuinely dies and returns from the dead.

The whole notion that Christians might have copied Jesus off Horus comes from the highly eccentric English spiritualist writer Gerald Massey (lived 1828 – 1907), who believed that all religions, including Christianity, were really corruptions of the true ancient Egyptian religion. Desperate to find a figure in Egyptian religion analogous to Jesus, Massey distorted ancient Egyptian stories about Horus and invented new stories based on weak or non-existent evidence to make Horus seem more like Jesus.

ABOVE: Photograph of Gerald Massey taken by John & Charles Watkins Photographers at some point between 1865 and 1870

Where the symbol of the cross really comes from

Christian proponents of the claim that the standard, T-shaped Latin cross is based on the Egyptian ankh often point out that the Greek word that is used in the gospels to describe the cross Jesus died on is σταυρός (staurós), which literally refers to an upright pole. What these people don’t realize is that this word was often used in ancient times in a general sense to refer to any kind of wooden object used to crucify a person, regardless of the object’s actual shape.

Another Greek word that is used in the New Testament to describe the cross Jesus died on is ξύλον (xýlon), which is a very generic term that can refer to any kind of structure made of wood. It could refer to a structure as simple as a single wooden beam or a massive structure as complicated as the Trojan Horse, which is sometimes referred to in classical Greek literature as the “Ἀργοῦς ξύλον,” or “wooden structure of the Archives.”

The ancient Romans used all kinds of crosses of all different shapes to crucify people. Sometimes people were crucified on simple wooden stakes without crossbars. Other times people were crucified on X-shaped crosses. Nonetheless, evidence from both Christian and non-Christian sources strongly suggests that crosses used for ancient Roman crucifixions were most often composed of an upright pole with a crossbeam near the top and that this is where the shape of the Latin cross comes from.

For instance, the Epistle of Barnabas, a Christian epistle written between c. 70 and c. 132 AD, clearly states that the cross Jesus was crucified on was shaped like the Greek letter tau ⟨Τ⟩. Similarly, the early Christian apologist Ioustinos Martys (lived c. 100 – c. 165 AD) claims in his Dialogue with Tryphon that the cross Jesus died on was composed of two beams. This indicates that, by at least as early as the second century AD, many early Christians already believed that Jesus’s cross had been shaped like a Latin cross or at least very similar to a Latin cross.

The comparison between the shape of a cross and the letter tau also occurs in non-Christian writings of the same time period. In the satirical dialogue A Trial in the Court of Vowels, written by the Syrian satirist Loukianos of Samosata (lived c. 125 – after c. 180 AD), the letter sigma makes the accusation against the letter tau that its shape provided the inspiration for the crosses used by tyrants to crucify people. He says, as translated by H. W. and F. G. Fowler:

“Men weep, and bewail their lot, and curse Cadmus with many curses for introducing Tau into the family of letters; they say it was his body that tyrants took for a model, his shape that they imitated, when they set up the erections on which men are crucified. Σταυρός [i.e. “cross”] the vile engine is called, and it derives its vile name from him.”

There are also a number of surviving ancient depictions that indicate that most crosses in antiquity were shaped like the Latin cross. As I discuss in this article from March 2020, the earliest surviving depiction of Jesus is probably an anti-Christian graffito from a building on the Palatine Hill in the city of Rome dated to around the late second century or early third century AD that depicts a man worshipping a crucified man with the head of a donkey with the caption “Alexamenos worshipping his god.”

The graffito was obviously created by a non-Christian to mock Christianity. Interestingly, though, the cross in the graffito is shaped almost exactly like the standard Latin cross that we are all familiar with today; it is composed of an upright pole with a crossbar near the top to support the donkey-man’s arms. In the graffito, there is also a second, shorter crossbar near the bottom to support the donkey-man’s legs.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Alexamenos Graffito, which is probably the earliest surviving depiction of Jesus

ABOVE: Stone rubbing of the Alexamenos Graffito from Wikimedia Commons

Another very early depiction of the crucified Jesus comes from a carved gemstone of mottled green and brown jasper dated to the early third century AD that most likely originates from Asia Minor or Syria and was probably originally used for occult rituals. The cross Jesus is shown hanging on in the gemstone is shaped exactly like a Latin cross; it is a pole with a single crossbar near the top to support Jesus’s arms. This time, there is no smaller crossbar to support his feet.

ABOVE: Carved gem dated to the early third century AD depicting Jesus hanging on a cross

A late Roman ivory panel dated to between c. 420 and c. 430 AD that is now on display in the British Museum depicts the crucifixion of Jesus and the suicide of Judas Iscariot. In the ivory carving, Jesus is hanging on a Latin cross composed of an upright pole and a crossbar near the top that is supporting his arms. A sign above his head reads “REX IVD,” an abbreviation for “IESVS NAZARENVS REX IVDAEORUM,” which means “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews” in Latin.

ABOVE: The crucifixion of Jesus and suicide of Judas Iscariot depicted on a Roman ivory panel dated to between c. 420 and c. 430 AD

A color illustration from the Syriac Rabbula Gospels, a Byzantine illustrated manuscript dated to c. 586 AD, depicts Jesus and two other criminals being crucified by the Romans on Latin crosses. As in the carved gemstone and the late Roman ivory panel, each cross in the illustration is shaped exactly like a Latin cross; each one is composed of an upright pole with a single crossbar near the top to support the arms.

ABOVE: Illustration of the crucifixion of Jesus from the Syriac Rabbula Gospels, dating to c. 586 AD

But Christians surely wouldn’t do that!

All the evidence strongly suggests that the standard Latin cross comes from the shape of cross that was most commonly used for Roman crucifixions. Despite this, for some reason, the article about the ankh in the Ancient History Encyclopedia boldly proclaims:

“This use of the ankh as a symbol of Christ’s promise of everlasting life through belief in his sacrifice and resurrection is most probably the origin of the Christian use of the cross as a symbol of faith today. The early Christians of Rome and elsewhere used the fertility symbol of the fish as a sign of their faith. They would not have considered using the image of the cross, a well-known form of execution, any more than someone today would choose to wear an amulet of an electric chair. The ankh, already established as a symbol of eternal life, leant itself easily to assimilation into the early Christian faith and continued as that religion’s symbol.”

This stark assertion that Christians “would not have considered” using the cross as a religious symbol and that the Latin cross as we know it must, therefore, in fact, be the ankh is made plainly ridiculous by the demonstrable fact that Christians did use the cross as a religious symbol.

Even if you think the cross was somehow influenced by the ankh, the fact is that Christians in antiquity regarded the cross as a symbol of Jesus’s crucifixion. They were widely made fun of for this. For instance, the Christian apologist Origenes of Alexandria quotes the anti-Christian polemicist Kelsos in his Against Kelsos 6.34 as having written the following passage in his treatise The True Word, as translated by Frederick Crombie:

“And in all their writings (is mention made) of the tree of life, and a resurrection of the flesh by means of the ‘tree,’ because, I imagine, their teacher was nailed to a cross, and was a carpenter by craft; so that if he had chanced to have been cast from a precipice, or thrust into a pit, or suffocated by hanging, or had been a leather-cutter, or stone-cutter, or worker in iron, there would have been (invented) a precipice of life beyond the heavens, or a pit of resurrection, or a cord of immortality, or a blessed stone, or an iron of love, or a sacred leather!”

As ridiculous as using an object that was normally used for torture and execution as a sacred symbol may seem, the fact is that early Christians did it.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the early fifth-century AD Christian mosaic from the mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, Italy, depicting Jesus as the “Good Shepherd,” holding a Latin cross

Crux ansata: a Christian cross that really is derived from the Egyptian ankh

The standard Latin cross is almost certainly not based on the Egyptian ankh. There are, however, many different variants of the Christian cross and the Latin cross is only one of them. Some of the most notable other variants include:

• the Greek cross (which is shaped like plus sign, with four arms of equal length)
• the Byzantine cross (which is shaped like a Latin cross, only the ends grow wider as they grow further apart from each other)
• the Cross of Lorraine (which has two crossbars of equal length, one at the top and the other at the bottom)
• the Jerusalem Cross (which is composed of a large, plus-sign-shaped cross and with four smaller, plus-sign-shaped crosses in each of its angles)
• the Papal Cross (which is a Latin cross with three bars of unequal length at the top, each bar longer than the bar above it)
• the Cross of Saint Peter (which is an upside-down Latin cross)
• the Cross of Saint Andrew (which is shaped like the letter X)

And so on.

Now, as it happens, one particular variant of the cross is literally an ankh: the crux ansata, or “handled cross,” which seems to have first become popular among Coptic-speaking Christians in Egypt in around the fourth century AD. The earliest known use of the crux ansata comes from the bottom of the final page of the Gospel of Judas in Codex Tchacos, a manuscript dated to around 300 AD or thereabouts containing Coptic translations of various early Christian apocryphal texts.

ABOVE: Image of the final page of the Gospel of Judas in Codex Tchacos. Notice the tiny crux ansata at the bottom of the page.

The crux ansata also appears in an illustration on the final page of Codex Glazier, a Christian manuscript dated based on paleographic evidence to the fourth or fifth century AD that contains a Coptic translation of the New Testament.

ABOVE: Illustration of a crux ansata from Codex Glazier, a manuscript of a Coptic translation of the New Testament dated to the fourth or fifth century AD

Far from being evidence that Christianity as a whole is a poorly-done knockoff of ancient Egyptian religion, however, the crux ansata is merely evidence that early Christians appropriated pre-existing symbols and iconography to suit Christian purposes.

The Christian historian Sokrates Scholastikos (lived c. 380 – after c. 439) records in his Ecclesiastical History Book Five, Chapter 17 that, after a group of Christians demolished the Serapeion in Alexandria in 391 AD, they discovered ankhs that had been carved on the stones of the temple. Some Egyptians who had converted to Christianity and who could read hieroglyphics declared that the ankh meant “life to come” and that it was a Christian symbol.

Sokrates Scholastikos further reports that certain Christians interpreted the hieroglyphic writing on the temple to say that the cross—a symbol of “life to come”—would appear and that, upon its arrival, the temple would be destroyed. He claims that this interpretation led many Egyptians to convert to Christianity, because they believed that this meant that Christianity was the fulfillment of the ancient Egyptian priests’ predictions.

Sokrates Scholastikos, who was notably not an Egyptian, expresses skepticism at the idea that the Egyptian priests could have really foreseen the coming of Christ, since they were pagans and servants of Satan. He therefore instead suggests that God probably just made use of a coincidence to bring people to Christ.

Appropriating the ankh as the crux ansata not only helped Egyptian Christians to win converts; it also helped integrate Christianity into Egyptian culture and allowed Egyptians to continue using a beloved sacred symbol even after they converted to Christianity. The crux ansata appears in several surviving funerary portraits from late antiquity, suggesting that, like the ankh, it was seen as a symbol that could protect a person’s soul in the afterlife.

ABOVE: Funerary portrait of an Egyptian man named Ammonios from the city of Antinopolis, dated to between c. 225 and c. 250 AD. Notice the crux ansata over his right shoulder.

ABOVE: Funerary portrait of an Egyptian woman dated to the third or fourth century AD, showing her holding a crux ansata in her left hand

ABOVE: Funerary portrait of an Egyptian woman dated to the fourth century AD, showing her holding a crux ansata in her left hand

The crux ansata also occurs in a number of surviving fragments of Egyptian cloth from late antiquity, which suggests that people wore it on their clothes as a protective symbol as well.

ABOVE: Fragment of an Egyptian shawl dated to the fourth century AD, bearing the symbol of the crux ansata, currently held in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto

ABOVE: Piece of cloth dated to the fourth or fifth century AD, bearing multiple cruces ansatae, currently held in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

ABOVE: Depiction of a crux ansata in a sixth-century AD Coptic Christian tapestry