Snake Bracelet, first century CE, Romano-Egyptian. Gold. Getty Museum. Gift of Barbara and Lawrence FleischmanSnake Bracelet, first century CE, Romano-Egyptian. Gold, 7.3 cm, 0.113 kg. Getty Museum. Gift of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, 96.AM.205. © J. Paul Getty Trust/Bruce White Photography

Spiral bracelets in the form of snakes were very popular in antiquity. This type of bracelet was worn coiled around the wearer's arm, the continuation of a fashion known earlier in the Greek world in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Such slip-on bracelets were always worn in pairs on the wrists or the upper arms. On this single spiral example, the goldsmith carefully recreated the sinuous motion of the curves of a snake's tail. Incised crosshatching on the snake's head and tail represents the texture of scales. A second smaller head emerges from the tail, creating an abbreviated version of the more elaborate double-snake bracelets popular in the earlier Ptolemaic period.