Tree of life

An 1847 depiction of the Norse Yggdrasil as described in the Icelandic Prose Edda by Oluf Olufsen Bagge
Confronted animals, here ibexes, flank a tree of life, a very common motif in the art of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean

The tree of life is a fundamental archetype in many of the world's mythological, religious, and philosophical traditions. It is closely related to the concept of the sacred tree. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life which appear in Genesis' Garden of Eden as part of the Jewish cosmology of creation, and the tree of knowledge connecting to heaven and the underworld such as Yggdrasil, are forms of the world tree or cosmic tree, and are portrayed in various religions and philosophies as the same tree.

Scholars differ on whether it was Egypt or Mesopotamia who was the originator of the motif, or that it was a "meta-metaphor" which arose in different cultures.

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