This serpent, often carved biting its own tail, forms an endless circle. What notion does it symbolise on graves?
The answer
The ouroboros, a serpent biting its own tail, is a very ancient symbol reintroduced into nineteenth-century funerary iconography to evoke eternity and the continuous cycle of life and death, with no beginning and no end.
This question belongs to the “Symbols and Allegories” series of the Père-Lachaise quiz: ten questions, a story behind every right answer.