Jewish symbolism. The shofar or ram's horn blown during Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement).

The personification of death, often with the scythe and an hourglass.

A symbol of death. A common representation is a child sleeping on a skull. As a caption it often says: 'Nascentes morimur' (We die from birth).

A skull with bones refers to the ephemeral life and relativity of all earthly possessions.

In art the snake is often a symbol of evil and a biblical synonym of Satan, 'the old serpent'. We also find the snake at the foot of the cross. It is a reference to the serpent from paradise who, according to Christian teachings, had brought man to ruin, a curse that was only lifted by the death of Christ on the cross. Sometimes Adam and Eve were also depicted in addition to the serpent, making the connection even clearer.

In the funerary sense we find the positive symbolism of the snake on funerary monuments, but also on gatehouses at cemeteries. A common sight is the tail-biting snake, the ouroboros. The snake here is alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. It points to the limitation, to the fact that everything is contained within the power of God, and to infinity. The healing snake can sometimes be seen in the form of an esculap on the grave monuments of doctors.

It is an ancient Greek, and pre-Christian, symbol of medicine. The symbol consists of a staff with a snake wrapped around it. The word esculap refers to the Greek god of medicine, Asklepios.

A soap bubble has been a symbol of transience since the sixteenth century. 'Homo Bulla' (man is a soap bubble) was used as an epitaph.

The square, the quadrilateral and the cube represent the earth and earthly existence. This is in contrast to the triangle, which represents the heavenly. The number four is related to the universe stretching in the four directions of the sky. Four is the number of the created world of the four elements, but also of the four seasons and the four ages of life. In Revelation (21:16) the New Jerusalem measures as long as it is wide as it is high.

Some monuments have a cube or square (diamond) turned with the corners pointing up and down. This illustrates earthly existence and the directions of the earth and heaven.

Reference to Christ, to new life and to heaven. A five-pointed star can also represent the five wounds of Christ.

A five-pointed star is called a pentagram. Symbol for success and health. In the Middle Ages, a five-pointed star was used to ward off demons. Hexagram, a six-pointed star, is a combination of 3 equal triangles. An example is the Star of David, a Jewish symbol. The triangle with the point pointing upwards would symbolize the masculine and the triangle downwards the feminine.

The Star of David or Shield of David, Maĝeen David in Hebrew, is a well-known Jewish symbol. When found in a cemetery, the star symbolizes the Jewish faith.

The Star of David is a hexagram, that is, a six-pointed star, consisting of two intertwined triangles. However, it is not originally an exclusive Jewish symbol and is also found in Eastern religions and even in Western churches, for example. The symbol hardly appears in early Jewish literature and works of art. The symbol is also not found on old Jewish funerary monuments. Despite the reference to King David, there is no evidence that David's shield was shaped like a Star of David.

The sun plays a major role in many religions in the form of the sun god. In the Christian world of images, the sun rising again and again in the east is a symbol of immortality and the resurrection. On funerary monuments we encounter the sun on the one hand as the halo behind the head of Christ (represented as ruler of time), on the other hand often as a semicircle representing the rising sun and thus referring to the immortality of man and the resurrection.

The sunflower represents unwavering dedication. This meaning is taken from the Greek myth, in which Clytia falls in love with the sun god Apollo, who only has eyes for her sister Leucothea.

Clytia's jealousy caused her sister's death. She herself slowly languished after the god continued to reject her. She turned into the flower that always turns its face to the sun. This motif occurs mainly on tombstones in the 1920s.

In ancient times it was a symbol of noble purity. Often a symbol of feminine grace because of the graceful movements that the swan makes. Sometimes the swan also has a negative meaning because of the black flesh under the white feathers. As such, the swan represents the hypocrite.

On funerary monuments we usually come across the swan as a symbol of the Lutheran church. Often a pastor is buried there. The symbol comes from a prediction from Johannes Hus (whose surname means goose). He predicted before he was burned at the stake that they would now roast a goose but hear a swan sing in a hundred years. That swan has since symbolized the Lutheran faith.

Like the laurel and ivy, the yew always remains green and is a symbol of eternity, mourning and death.

For the Celts it was the tree of death because of its poisonous needles and fruit seeds. Traditionally, yew twigs were carried at funerals and were stuck in the ground around the grave, sprouting up as a cutting. In Greek mythology, the yew is a tree of the underworld.

The seal of the original Theosophical Society is a variation of the personal seal of the Russian occultist and esotericist Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) and is made up of various symbols that have been in use for centuries. To the theosophical movement, they are "part of the universal mystery language that can convey sacred truths of nature to the mind without words." The seal consists in theosophical sense of the Serpent with its tail in its mouth, the Swastika, the Intertwined Triangles and the Looped Cross, Ankh or Tau. The movement had a large following in Indonesia.

The inverted (burning) torch had been a symbol of extinguished life and attribute of death since ancient times. A burning torch refers to (renewed) life (resurrection). Often two extinguished torches are depicted crosswise.

In Christian iconography the tree is a symbol of the life, and its progression through the annual cycle points to life, death and resurrection. The cross of Christ would later have been made from the wood of the 'tree of knowledge' in paradise, which henceforth became the 'tree of life' for believers. The Tree of Life on a tomb symbolizes the ending of life. Sometimes cut down, including ax, referring to a life cut short too young.