Black and grey realism tattoo of a kneeling winged Egyptian figure holding an ankh, on the inner upper arm.

Winged Egyptian figure with ankh on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A kneeling figure in Egyptian dress, with a headdress and broad collar, spreads long feathered wings across the width of the design. An ankh is held in one raised hand on the right side. The tattoo uses fine shading and smooth gradients in black and grey, with strong contrast in the feather detail, and sits centred on the inner upper arm against a pale brick wall.

Realism Upper arm Winged figure Ankh Egyptian Wing Headdress Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the lamp's nearly gone and I won't waste the oil on people who fidget. This was the last winter of Pell's Travelling Marvel, when the big top had more patches than canvas and the lion had long since gone to a farm in Lincolnshire. The only act still drawing a crowd was the Winged Lady, kneeling on her painted board between two lanterns while the ringmaster swore she could weigh a soul on a brass scale. Folk paid a penny to watch the feathers stir. Nobody asked where the feathers came from.

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Her name was Ottilie, and she kept a silver ankh in her fist, the one thing from the old country the ringmaster had never pawned. One night in Maidstone, a farmer's boy came round the back of the tent with a ledger and a red face. Pell had sold the horses, he said, and the wages for the wagon men had gone on the card tables in Ashford. Ottilie didn't shout. She took a single grey feather from her board, laid it in the left pan of the scale, and asked Pell to put his promise in the right.

He laughed, and then he didn't. The pan holding the feather would not rise. He emptied his pockets, then his boots, then the lockbox, and still the feather sat there heavy as a church bell. By morning he had walked off toward the coast with nothing but his hat, and nobody saw him again.

The wagons went for scrap and the canvas for tarpaulin. Ottilie kept the scale, the ankh and the feather. If you walk out past the old hop fields on a still night, they say you can see her kneeling in the wet grass, arms spread wide, holding up the little cross of life to whoever has finally told the truth.