Turtles are frequently depicted in popular culture as easygoing, patient, and wise creatures. Due to their long lifespan, slow movement, sturdiness, and wrinkled appearance, they are an emblem of longevity and stability in many cultures around the world.Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo, trans. Sage, Jack, 2002, A Dictionary of Symbols, Courier Dover Publications, .Ball, Catherine, 2004, Animal Motifs in Asian Art, Courier Dover Publications, . Turtles are regularly incorporated into human culture, with painters, photographers, poets, songwriters, and sculptors using them as subjects.Lutz, Peter L., Musick, John A., and Wyneken, Jeanette, 2002, The Biology of Sea Turtles, CRC Press, . They have an important role in mythologies around the world,Garfield, Eugene, 1986, The Turtle: A Most Ancient Mystery. Part 1. Its Role in Art, Literature, and Mythology, Towards Scientography: 9 (Essays of An Information Scientist), Isis Press, . and are often implicated in creation myths regarding the origin of the Earth.Stookey, Lorena Laura, 2004, Thematic Guide to World Mythology, Greenwood Press, . Sea turtles are a charismatic megafauna and are used as symbols of the marine environment and environmentalism.

As a result of its role as a slow, peaceful creature in culture, the turtle can be misconceived as a sedentary animal; however, many types of turtle, especially sea turtles, frequently migrate over large distances in oceans.Plotkin, Pamela, T., 2007, Biology and Conservation of Ridley Sea Turtles, Johns Hopkins University, .

In mythology, legends, and folklore The turtle has a prominent position as a symbol of important concepts in religion, mythology, and folklore from around the world, including steadfastness and tranquility. A tortoise's longevity is suggested by its long lifespan and its shell, which to some symbolizes protection from any foe. In the cosmological myths of several cultures a World Turtle carries the world upon its back or supports the heavens. The myth of a World Tortoise, along with that of a world-bearing elephant, was discussed comparatively by Edward Burnett Tylor (1878:341).

Around the world the tortoise and/or turtle can be seen as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge, and is able to defend itself on its own. It can be regarded as personifying water, the moon, the Earth, time, immortality, and fertility.

A rock engraved as a turtle, dated to 35,000 years BCE, has been found in the deepest section of Manot Cave in Galilee, Israel. Turtles appear in rock art in many places around the world, including polychrome paintings at Dhambalin in Somaliland, dated to ca 5000-3000 BCE; and petroglyphs at such places as Ute Tribal Park, Mancos Canyon, Colorado (ca 1000 years old), Easter Island or Rapa Nui and Murujuga or the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia.

The psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung interpreted the turtle as the primordial chaos, the alchemical massa confusa, noting that the Hindi Trimurti has a turtle at the bottom, from which everything else grows through transformation.

Africa In tales told by a number of African ethnic groups, the tortoise is the cleverest animal. Ijapa or Alabahun the tortoise is a trickster, accomplishing heroic deeds or getting into trouble, in a cycle of tales told by the Yoruba of Nigeria and Benin. As "Mbe Nwa Aniga" ("Tortoise son of Aniga") in the folklore of the Igbo people of Nigeria, he is depicted as a slow but smart manipulator able to figure a way out of every dicey situation.

Ancient Egypt

The turtle Shetyw (also Shetw, Sheta, or Shtyw) was common in Ancient Egyptian Art (especially Predynastic and Old Kingdom art). Turtle fossils are the most common reptiles found in the Fayoum, including Gigantochersina ammon, a tortoise as large as those living on the Galapagos Islands today.

Predynastic slate palettes represent freshwater (soft carapace, Trionyx triunguis) turtles, as does the hieroglyph for "turtle", 𓆉, in which the animal is always represented from above. Zoomorphic palettes were commonly made in the shapes of turtles. A stone vase in the form of a turtle was found in Naqada.

The earliest representations of the Nile turtle are from pre-dynastic times; they had magical significance and were meant to ward off evil. Amulets and objects depicting the turtles represent them as a force to defend health and life. Many relics from the Middle Kingdom such as magical knives depicted turtles and were inscribed to protect the women and children of the house.

Among Ptah's many creatures, Shetyw was neither especially remarkable nor esteemed. Though excluded from lists of animal offerings to the deities, there are nevertheless great quantities of turtle bones at the great ceremonial complex at Heirakonpolis in Upper Egypt. Sacrifices of turtles may have served some ritual or liturgical purpose within the ancient Egyptian ceremonial system.

As an aquatic animal, the turtle was associated with the Underworld.Turtle headed watery messenger of Osiris The turtle was associated with Set, and so with the enemies of Ra who tried to stop the solar barque as it traveled through the underworld. Since the XIXth Dynasty, and particularly in the Late and Greco-Roman periods, turtles were ritually speared by kings and nobles as evil creatures.

The famous Hunters Palette shows most of the hunters carrying a kind of shield interpreted as a turtle-carapace shield. In an Early Dynastic tomb at Helwan a man was buried beneath the carapace of a tortoise who had lost his feet in an accident. The carapace may symbolize the "way in which the owner used to move slowly like a tortoise," or sitting in the carapace may have been a very useful way for the owner to move around.

The Medical Ebers Papyrus cites the use of turtle carapaces and organs in some formulas, including one formula for the removal of hair. An ointment made from the brain of a turtle was the treatment for squinting.Ophthalmology in Ancient Egypt Parts of turtles were used to grind eye paint, which was applied both as a cosmetic and to protect eyes from infection and over-exposure to sun, dust, wind, and insects.Photo of Turtle Palette

The flesh of Trionyx was eaten from Predynastic times to as late as the Old Kingdom; later the flesh of turtles began to be considered an "abomination of Ra" and the animals were thought of as evil. Turtle carapaces and scutes from Red Sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) were used in rings, bracelets, dishes, bowls, knife hilts, amulets, and combs. Carapaces from Kleinmann's tortoise were used as sounding boards for lutes, harps and mandolins. Turtle shells were also used to make norvas, an instrument resembling a banjo.

While eaten in Predynastic, Archaic, and Old Kingdom periods, turtles were used only for medicinal purposes after the Old Kingdom. Carapaces were used well into the New Kingdom.Ancient Egyptian Representations of Turtles book In reliefs and paintings of the Old, Middle, and Early New Kingdoms, the turtle is depicted rarely, and as an innocuous reptile. After Dynasty XIX, the turtle is usually depicted as a malignant creature associated with Apophis and subject to ritual extermination. In Predynastic and Archaic times, objects of daily use, such as cosmetic palettes, dishes, and vessels, were made in the shapes of turtles, while after the Old and Middle Kingdoms representations of turtles are more often found on amuletic objects and furniture. After the Middle Kingdom, the turtle's shape is rarely associated with any object which would come into close contact with a person, reflecting the increasing explicit hostility shown to turtles in scenes and texts.

Ancient Mesopotamia In ancient Mesopotamia, the turtle was associated with the god Enki and was used on kudurrus as one of Enki's symbols. In the myth of Ninurta and the Turtle, Enki thwarts an attempt by the god Ninurta to seize absolute power by creating a giant turtle and releasing it behind Ninurta, so it bites the hero's ankle. As they struggle, the turtle digs a pit with its claws, which both of them fall into. Enki gloats over Ninurta's defeat. The heron and the turtle is an ancient Sumerian story that has survived to this day.

Ancient Greece and Rome One of Aesop's fables is The Tortoise and the Hare.

The tortoise was the symbol of the ancient Greek city of Aegina, on the island by the same name: the seal and coins of the city shows images of tortoises. The word Chelonian comes from the Greek Chelone, a tortoise god. The tortoise was a fertility symbol in Greek and Roman times, and an attribute of Aphrodite/Venus. Aphrodite Ourania, is draped rather than nude Aphrodite with her foot resting on a tortoise at Musée du Louvre.

The playwright Aeschylus was said to have been killed by a tortoise dropped by a bird.

A massive sea turtle is used by the bandit Sciron to dispose of his victims after he pushes them into the sea. Sciron is defeated by Theseus pushing him into the sea before being eaten by the turtle.Pseudo-Apollodorus. Bibliotheca, Epitome 1.2; Hyginus. Fabulae, 38; Pausanias. Description of Greece, 1.44.12; Scholia. ad Euripides, Hippolytus, 976

In Hermes' origin story, the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, Hermes invented the Lyre by killing a turtle or a tortoises and using its shell.

In the account of Zeus and Hera's wedding, the nymph Chelone, was disinclined to leave her house to attend, so Zeus, or Hermes on Zeus' behalf, threw Chelone and her house, which stood on the bank of a river, into the water, and transformed her into a lazy tortoise, who had henceforth to carry her house on her back, to punish her.

Asia

Malaysia

Ketupat penyu is made from a coconut leaf to appear like a turtle. It is used in a ritual to banish the ghosts in Malay traditional medicine.

China For the Chinese, the tortoise is sacred and symbolizes longevity, power, and tenacity. It is said that the tortoise helped Pangu (also known as P'an Ku) create the world: the creator goddess Nuwa or Nugua cuts the legs off a sea turtle and uses them to prop up the sky after Gong Gong destroys the mountain that had supported the sky. The flat plastron and domed carapace of a turtle parallel the ancient Chinese idea of a flat earth and domed sky.Allan, Sarah, 1991, The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China, SUNY Press, . For the Chinese as well as the Indians, the tortoise symbolizes the universe. Quoting Pen T'sao, "the upper dome-shaped part of its back has various signs, which correspond with the constellations on the sky, and this is Yan; the lower part has many lines, which relate to the earth and is the Yin.

The tortoise is one of the "Four Fabulous Animals", the most prominent beasts of China. These animals govern the four points of the compass, with the Black Tortoise the ruler of the north, symbolizing endurance, strength, and longevity.Simoons, Frederick J., 1991, Food in China: A Cultural and Historical Inquiry, CRC Press, . The tortoise and the tiger are the only real animals of the four, although the tortoise is depicted with supernatural features such as dragon ears, flaming tentacles at its shoulders and hips, and a long hairy tail representing seaweed and the growth of plant parasites found on older tortoise shells that flow behind the tortoise as it swims. The Chinese believe that tortoises come out in the spring when they change their shells, and hibernate during the winter, which is the reason for their long life.

The Chinese Imperial Army carried flags with images of dragons and tortoises as symbols of unparalleled power and inaccessibility, as these animals fought with each other but both remained alive. The dragon cannot break the tortoise and the latter cannot reach the dragon.

In Tibet, the tortoise is a symbol of creativity.