Black ink Eye of Horus tattoo with a curling tail and small dots, placed on the inner wrist of a hand held palm outwards.

Eye of Horus on the inner wrist

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black Eye of Horus design sits on the inner wrist, shown with the palm raised towards the camera. The eye has a bold outlined brow, a shaded iris and pupil, a curled tail stroke and a row of small dots beneath it. The indoor background is blurred and warmly lit, with the tattoo as the clear focus.

Forearm Eye of horus Eye Swirl Dot Wrist

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain has come in sideways across the fish market at Lowmarsh, and you are the only trader who has not ducked under an awning. Mrs Okafor's stall is shuttered for the night, so you crouch beneath her tarpaulin minding the tin she left you. Her instructions were brief: keep the lid on, don't let the gulls near it, and if a man asks for the falcon's eye, sell him the cheap brass one and nothing more.

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He comes at dusk, coat dark with water, holding a coin with a hawk stamped on it. He calls the thing he wants a sound eye and says he has been told it can be bought here for a penny. You remember the story Mrs Okafor told you on your first wet morning: the falcon god lost his eye in a fight with a brother who hated him, and the eye was carried home and made whole, and ever since, a mended eye has been worth more than a whole one for keeping harm at the door.

You lift the lid. The powder inside is black as the canal at midnight. With the finest brush you have, you draw the heavy brow, the teardrop of the iris, the long curl at the tail, and a row of small dots beneath it, each one placed as Mrs Okafor taught you, slowly, without looking up. He watches your hand and does not speak. When you give him the paper twist, he asks what he owes.

You tell him the rain has already been paid for. He walks off into the grey, and the lamp catches the curl of the mark on the twist of paper in his fist. In the morning Mrs Okafor counts the tin, finds it lighter by exactly one pinch, and nods at the drain, where the night's rain is carrying the last of the black out to the sea.