The ankh, also known as crux ansata (the Latin for "cross with a handle") is an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic ideograph with the meaning "life".
The Egyptian gods are often portrayed carrying it by its loop, or bearing one in each hand, arms crossed over their chest. The ankh appears in hand or in proximity of almost every deity in the Egyptian pantheon (including Pharaohs).
Alan Gardiner explains the hieroglyph as a depiction of a sandal-strap.
There have been alternative suggestions. One of the earliest proposals was that of Thomas Inman, first published in 1869, according to which the symbol combines "the male triad and the female unit". E. A. Wallis Budge (1904) postulated that the symbol originated as the belt buckle of the mother goddess Isis
More recently, the authors of The Quick and the Dead (2004) speculated that the ankh, djed, and was symbols have a basis in "cattle culture", with the ankh representing the thoracic vertebra of a bull (seen in cross section), the djed the base on sacrum of a bull's spine and the was a staff.