Skull symbolism is the attachment of

symbol A symbol is a mark, Sign (semiotics), sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, physical object, object, or wikt:relationship, relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by cr ...

ic meaning to the

human skull The skull, or cranium, is typically a bony enclosure around the brain of a vertebrate. In some fish, and amphibians, the skull is of cartilage. The skull is at the head end of the vertebrate. In the human, the skull comprises two prominen ...

. The most common symbolic use of the skull is as a representation of

death Death is the end of life; the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Death eventually and inevitably occurs in all organisms. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose sh ...

. Humans can often recognize the buried fragments of an only partially revealed

cranium The skull, or cranium, is typically a bony enclosure around the brain of a vertebrate. In some fish, and amphibians, the skull is of cartilage. The skull is at the head end of the vertebrate. In the human, the skull comprises two prominent ...

even when other bones may look like shards of stone. The human brain has a specific region for recognizing faces, and is so attuned to finding them that it can see faces in a few dots and lines or

punctuation marks Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of written text should be read (silently or aloud) and, consequently, understood. The oldest known examples of punctuation marks were found in the Mesha Stele from the 9th century BC, consisti ...

; the human brain cannot separate the image of the human skull from the familiar human face. Because of this, both the death and the now-past life of the skull are symbolized. Moreover, a human skull with its large eye sockets displays a degree of

neoteny Neoteny (), also called juvenilization,Montagu, A. (1989). Growing Young. Bergin & Garvey: CT. is the delaying or slowing of the Physiology, physiological, or Somatic (biology), somatic, development of an organism, typically an animal. Neoteny i ...

, which humans often find visually appealing—yet a skull is also obviously

dead Death is the end of life; the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Death eventually and inevitably occurs in all organisms. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose sho ...

, and to some can even seem to look sad due to the downward facing slope on the ends of the eye sockets. A skull with the

lower jaw In jawed vertebrates, the mandible (from the Latin ''mandibula'', 'for chewing'), lower jaw, or jawbone is a bone that makes up the lowerand typically more mobilecomponent of the mouth (the upper jaw being known as the maxilla). The jawbone i ...

intact may also appear to be grinning or laughing due to the exposed teeth. As such, human skulls often have a greater visual appeal than the other bones of the

human skeleton The human skeleton is the internal framework of the human body. It is composed of around 270 bones at birth – this total decreases to around 206 bones by adulthood after some bones get fused together. The bone mass in the skeleton makes up ab ...

, and can fascinate even as they repel. Societies predominantly associate skulls with death and evil.

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

reserves character U+1F480 (💀) for a human skull

pictogram A pictogram (also pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto) is a graphical symbol that conveys meaning through its visual resemblance to a physical object. Pictograms are used in systems of writing and visual communication. A pictography is a wri ...

Examples

Throughout the centuries skulls symbolized either warnings of various threats or as reminder of the vanity of earthly pleasures in contrast with our own mortality. Nevertheless, the skull seems to be omnipresent in the first decade of the twenty-first century, appearing on jewelry, bags, clothing and in the shape of various decorative items. However, the increasing use of the skull as a visual symbol in popular culture reduces its original meaning as well as its traditional connotation.

Literature

One of the best-known examples of skull symbolism occurs in

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

's ''

Hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...

'', where the title character recognizes the skull of an old friend: "Alas, poor

Yorick Yorick is an unseen character in William Shakespeare's play ''Hamlet''. He is the dead court jester whose Human skull, skull is exhumed by the The Gravediggers, First Gravedigger in Act 5, Scene 1, of the play. The sight of Yorick's skull evokes ...

! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest..." Hamlet is inspired to utter a bitter soliloquy of despair and rough ironic humor. Compare Hamlet's words "Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft" to Talmudic sources: "...Rabi Ishmael he High Priest.. put he severed head of a martyrin his lap... and cried: oh sacred mouth!...who buried you in ashes...!". The skull was a symbol of melancholy for Shakespeare's contemporaries. An old Yoruba folktale tells of a man who encountered a skull mounted on a post by the wayside. To his astonishment, the skull spoke. The man asked the skull why it was mounted there. The skull said that it was mounted there for talking. The man then went to the

king King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...

, and told the king of the marvel he had found, a talking skull. The king and the man returned to the place where the skull was mounted; the skull remained silent. The king then commanded that the man be beheaded, and ordered that his head be mounted in place of the skull. The skull speaks in the catacombs of the Capuchin brothers beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione in Rome,The Crypt: Church of the Immaculate
Official site of the Capuchins where disassembled bones and teeth and skulls of the departed Capuchins have been rearranged to form a rich

Baroque architecture Baroque architecture is a highly decorative and theatrical style which appeared in Italy in the late 16th century and gradually spread across Europe. It was originally introduced by the Catholic Church, particularly by the Jesuits, as a means to ...

of the human condition, in a series of anterooms and subterranean chapels with the inscription, set in bones: :''Noi eravamo quello che voi siete, e quello che noi siamo voi sarete.'' :"We were what you are; and what we are, you will be."

Art

The Serpent crawling through the eyes of a skull is a familiar image that survives in contemporary Goth subculture. The serpent is a

chthonic In Greek mythology, deities referred to as chthonic () or chthonian () were gods or spirits who inhabited the underworld or existed in or under the earth, and were typically associated with death or fertility. The terms "chthonic" and "chthonian" ...

god of knowledge and of immortality, because he sloughs off his skin. The serpent guards the Tree in the Greek Garden of the Hesperides and, later, a Tree in the

Garden of Eden In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden (; ; ) or Garden of God ( and ), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the biblical paradise described in Genesis 2–3 and Ezekiel 28 and 31.. The location of Eden is described in the Book of Ge ...

. The serpent in the skull is always making its way through the socket that was the eye: knowledge persists beyond death, the emblem says, and the serpent has the secret. The late medieval and Early Renaissance Northern and Italian painters place the skull where it lies at the foot of the

Cross A cross is a religious symbol consisting of two Intersection (set theory), intersecting Line (geometry), lines, usually perpendicular to each other. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally. A cross of oblique lines, in the shape of t ...

at Golgotha (

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

for ''the place of the skull''). But for them it has become quite specifically the skull of

Adam Adam is the name given in Genesis 1–5 to the first human. Adam is the first human-being aware of God, and features as such in various belief systems (including Judaism, Christianity, Gnosticism and Islam). According to Christianity, Adam ...

Elizabethan The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The Roman symbol of Britannia (a female per ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, the Death's-Head

Skull The skull, or cranium, is typically a bony enclosure around the brain of a vertebrate. In some fish, and amphibians, the skull is of cartilage. The skull is at the head end of the vertebrate. In the human, the skull comprises two prominent ...

, usually a depiction without the lower jawbone, was emblematic of bawds, rakes, sexual adventurers and prostitutes; the term Death's-Head was actually parlance for these rakes, and most of them wore half-skull rings to advertise their station, either professionally or otherwise. The original Rings were wide silver objects, with a half-skull decoration not much wider than the rest of the band; This allowed it to be rotated around the finger to hide the skull in polite company, and to reposition it in the presence of likely conquests. Venetian painters of the 16th century elaborated moral allegories for their patrons, and ''memento mori'' was a common theme. The theme carried by an inscription on a rustic tomb, "Et in Arcadia ego"—"I too min Arcadia", if it is Death that is speaking—is made famous by two paintings by

Nicolas Poussin Nicolas Poussin (, , ; June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was a French painter who was a leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythologic ...

, but the motto made its pictorial debut in

Guercino Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (February 8, 1591 – December 22, 1666),Miller, 1964 better known as (il) Guercino (), was an Italian Baroque painter and draftsman from Cento in the Emilia region, who was active in Rome and Bologna. The vigorous n ...

's version, 1618–22 (in the Galleria Barberini, Rome): in it, two awestruck young shepherds come upon an inscribed plinth, in which the inscription ET IN ARCADIA EGO gains force from the prominent presence of a wormy skull in the foreground. In C. Allan Gilbert's much-reproduced lithograph of a lovely Gibson Girl seated at her fashionable vanity table, an observer can witness its transformation into an alternate image. A ghostly echo of the worldly Magdalene's repentance motif lurks behind this turn-of-the-20th century icon. The skull becomes an

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic Church, Catholic, and Lutheranism, Lutheran churches. The most common subjects include Jesus, Mary, mother of ...

itself when its painted representation becomes a substitute for the real thing.

Simon Schama Sir Simon Michael Schama ( ; born 13 February 1945) is an English historian and television presenter. He specialises in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. He is a professor of history and art history at Columbia Uni ...

chronicled the ambivalence of the Dutch to their own worldly success during the

Dutch Golden Age The Dutch Golden Age ( ) was a period in the history of the Netherlands which roughly lasted from 1588, when the Dutch Republic was established, to 1672, when the '' Rampjaar'' occurred. During this period, Dutch trade, scientific development ...

of the first half of the 17th century in '' The Embarrassment of Riches.'' The possibly frivolous and merely decorative nature of the

still life A still life (: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, human-m ...

genre was avoided by Pieter Claesz in his ''

Vanitas ''Vanitas'' is a genre of symbolizing the temporality, transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, and thus the vanity of ambition and all worldly desires. The paintings involved still life imagery of transitory i ...

'': Skull, opened case-watch, overturned emptied wineglasses, snuffed candle, book: "Lo, the wine of life runs out, the spirit is snuffed, oh Man, for all your learning, time yet runs on: Vanity!" The visual cues of the hurry and violence of life are contrasted with

eternity Eternity, in common parlance, is an Infinity, infinite amount of time that never ends or the quality, condition or fact of being everlasting or eternal. Classical philosophy, however, defines eternity as what is timeless or exists outside tim ...

in this somber, still and utterly silent painting. The skull speaks. It says ''"Et in Arcadia ego"'' or simply ''"

."'' In a first-century mosaic tabletop from a

Pompeii Pompeii ( ; ) was a city in what is now the municipality of Pompei, near Naples, in the Campania region of Italy. Along with Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Villa Boscoreale, many surrounding villas, the city was buried under of volcanic ash and p ...

triclinium A ''triclinium'' (: ''triclinia'') is a formal dining room in a Ancient Rome, Roman building. The word is adopted from the Greek language, Greek ()—from (), "three", and (), a sort of couch, or rather chaise longue. Each couch was sized to ...

(now in Naples), the skull is crowned with a carpenter's square and

plumb-bob A plumb bob, plumb bob level, or plummet, is a weight, usually with a pointed tip on the bottom, suspended from a string and used as a vertical direction as a reference line, or plumb-line. It is a precursor to the spirit level and used to esta ...

, which dangles before its empty eyesockets (Death as the great leveler), while below is an image of the ephemeral and changeable nature of life: a butterfly atop a wheel—a table for a philosopher's '' symposium''. Similarly, a skull might be seen crowned by a chaplet of dried roses, a ''

carpe diem () is a Latin aphorism, usually translated "seize the day", taken from book 1 of the Roman poet Horace's work '' Odes'' (23 BC). Translation is the second-person singular present active imperative of '' carpō'' "pick or pluck" used by Ho ...

'', though rarely as bedecked as Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada's Catrina. In Mesoamerican architecture, stacks of skulls (real or sculpted) represented the result of human sacrifices.

Pirates

The pirate death's-head epitomizes the pirates' ruthlessness and despair; their usage of death imagery might be paralleled with their occupation challenging the natural order of things. "Pirates also affirmed their unity symbolically", Marcus Rediker asserts, remarking the skeleton or skull symbol with bleeding heart and hourglass on the black pirate ensign, and asserting "it triad of interlocking symbols—death, violence, limited time—simultaneously pointed to meaningful parts of the seaman's experience, and eloquently bespoke the pirates' own consciousness of themselves as preyed upon in turn. Pirates seized the symbol of mortality from ship captains who used the skull 'as a marginal sign in their logs to indicate the record of a death'"

Religion

Skull art is found in depictions of some Hindu Gods.

Shiva Shiva (; , ), also known as Mahadeva (; , , Help:IPA/Sanskrit, ɐɦaːd̪eːʋɐh and Hara, is one of the Hindu deities, principal deities of Hinduism. He is the God in Hinduism, Supreme Being in Shaivism, one of the major traditions w ...

has been depicted as carrying skull. Goddess Chamunda is described as wearing a garland of severed heads or skulls (''

Mundamala Mundamala (, ), also called kapalamala or rundamala, is a garland of severed human heads and/or skulls, in Hindu iconography and Buddhist symbolism#Esoteric Buddhist symbols, Tibetan Buddhist iconography. In Hinduism, the mundamala is a character ...

''). Kedareshwara Temple,

Hoysaleswara Temple Hoysaleshwara temple, also referred simply as the Halebidu temple, is a 12th-century Hinduism, Hindu temple dedicated to the god Shiva. It is the largest monument in Halebidu, a town in the state of Karnataka, India and the former capital of th ...

, Chennakeshava Temple, Lakshminarayana Temple are some of the Hindu temples that include sculptures of skulls and Goddess Chamunda. The temple of

Kali Kali (; , ), also called Kalika, is a major goddess in Hinduism, primarily associated with time, death and destruction. Kali is also connected with transcendental knowledge and is the first of the ten Mahavidyas, a group of goddesses who p ...

is veneered with skulls, but the goddess Kali offers life through the welter of blood. In

Vajrayana ''Vajrayāna'' (; 'vajra vehicle'), also known as Mantrayāna ('mantra vehicle'), Guhyamantrayāna ('secret mantra vehicle'), Tantrayāna ('tantra vehicle'), Tantric Buddhism, and Esoteric Buddhism, is a Mahāyāna Buddhism, Mahāyāna Buddhis ...

Buddhist iconography, skull symbolism is often used in depictions of wrathful deities and of dakinis. In some Korean life replacement narratives, a person discovers an abandoned skull and worships it. The skull later gives advice on how to cheat the gods of death and prevent an early death. FutschesReich-Vergleich

Political symbol

A skull was worn as a trophy on the belt of the Lombard king

Alboin Alboin (530s – 28 June 572) was List of kings of the Lombards, king of the Lombards from about 560 until 572. During his reign the Lombards ended their migration period, migrations by settling in Kingdom of the Lombards, Italy, the northern ...

, it was a constant grim triumph over his old enemy, and he drank from it. In the same way a skull is a warning when it decorates the palisade of a city, or deteriorates on a pike at a Traitor's Gate. The

Skull Tower Skull Tower ( sr-Cyrl, Ћеле кула, Ćele kula, ) is a stone structure embedded with human skulls located in Niš, Serbia. It was constructed by the Ottoman Empire following the Battle of Čegar of May 1809, during the First Serbian Uprisi ...

, with the embedded skulls of Serbian rebels, was built in 1809 on the highway near

Niš Niš (; sr-Cyrl, Ниш, ; names of European cities in different languages (M–P)#N, names in other languages), less often spelled in English as Nish, is the list of cities in Serbia, third largest city in Serbia and the administrative cente ...

, Serbia, as a stark political warning from the Ottoman government. In this case the skulls ''are'' the statement: that the current owner had the power to kill the former. "Drinking out of a skull the blood of slain (sacrificial) enemies is mentioned by Ammianus and

Livy Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding i ...

, and Solinus describes the Irish custom of bathing the face in the blood of the slain and drinking it." The rafters of a traditional Jívaro medicine house in Peru, or in New Guinea. When the skull appears in Nazi SS insignia, the death's-head ('' Totenkopf'') represents loyalty unto death. ECB Hazard Symbol T

Holidays

Skulls and skeletons are the main symbol of the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday. Skull-shaped decorations called calaveras are a common sight during the festivities. Skull on gravestone at Durisdeer church

Other uses

When

tattoo A tattoo is a form of body modification made by inserting tattoo ink, dyes, or pigments, either indelible or temporary, into the dermis layer of the skin to form a design. Tattoo artists create these designs using several tattooing processes ...

ed on the forearm its apotropaic power is thought to help an outlaw biker cheat death. The skull and crossbones signify "Poison" when they appear on a glass bottle containing a white powder, or any container in general. The skull that is often engraved or carved on the head of early

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

tombstones might be merely a symbol of mortality, but the skull is also often backed by an angelic pair of wings, lofting mortality beyond its own death.

In pop culture

File:ZombieCocktail.jpg, ''Zombie Cocktail'' in a skull-shaped glass Skulls and

memento mori (Latin for "remember (that you have) to die")

, as for example the diamond-studded skull '' For the Love of God'' by

Damien Hirst Damien Steven Hirst (; né Brennan; born 7 June 1965) is an English artist and art collector. He was one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest ...

, have become a popular trend in

pop culture Popular culture (also called pop culture or mass culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as popular art pop_art.html" ;"title="f. pop art">f. pop artor mass art, some ...

In fashion

File:Two young African American boys smile and proudly show off the blue crab they caught.jpg, Young African American boy with skull-jacket File:Sweaterdog.jpg, Dog with skull fashion File:Fuchstückenjacke mit Kaninfell-Totenkopf Emblem, Locarno 2013.jpg, Skull jacket made from fox-fur

Locarno Locarno (; ; Ticinese dialect, Ticinese: ; formerly in ) is a southern Switzerland, Swiss List of towns in Switzerland, town and Municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the district Locarno (district), Locarno (of which it is the capita ...

(2013) File:Crampons.jpg, Sneakers ''Crampons'' (photo: Tgiros) File:Smile, please - ok then. (2446008262).jpg, Outfit at Whitby Goth Weekend, 2008 File:Biker with skull-and-crossbones bandana.jpg, Bikers wore skull-bandanas before it became a fashion trend Skulls have been also found on clothing items for men, women and children. Some sources credited

Alexander McQueen Lee Alexander McQueen (17 March 1969 – 11 February 2010) was a British fashion designer and couturier. He founded his own Alexander McQueen (brand), Alexander McQueen label in 1992 and was chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001. His ac ...

for introducing skulls as a fashion trend with stylized skulls, starting with skull-decorated bags and scarves. The trend is extant by the early

2010s File:2010s collage v22.png, From top left, clockwise: Anti-government protests called the Arab Spring arose in 2010–2011, and as a result, many governments were overthrown, including when Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was Death of Muammar Gad ...

References

Footnotes

General

# Ariès, Philippe, ''L'Homme devant la mort'': (Seuil, 1985), 2 vol. , #Veyne, Paul (1987). ''A History of Private Life : 1. From Pagan Rome to Byzantium'' ( p. 208 illustrates the skull mosaic from Pompeii)

External links

Skull representations and symbolism in art and optical illusions
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20100821074158/http://www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/41722/skulls-everywhere Skulls Everywhere- slideshow by '' Life magazine''
"Skulls and the Motorcycle"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Human Skull Symbolism Symbolism Cultural aspects of death Skulls in art Visual motifs