For ancient Egyptians, the ankh meant life.\n\nFor alchemists, its another way of writing the planetary symbol for Venus.\n\nFor Hermetics, it represents the union of the male and female principles.\n\nCoptic Christians adopted it as their preferred cross, to remind the world that Akhenaten - who also extensively used this symbol - was obstensibly the creator of monotheism.\n\nEarly Greek Christians sometimes used it to represent the miracle of the fishes, or as the "rho" part of the Labarum.