Asp
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Asp. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
or Haje, a venomous serpent of Egypt akin to the cobra of India. It is three to five feet long. Like the cobra, it dilates the loose folds of the neck into a hood. The jugglers of Cairo extract its fangs and teach it to dance for the amusement of the people. Both the asp and the cobra are fond of music. It is said that these jugglers of today can throw the asp into a rod-like rigor by pressing the nape of its neck, and it has been suggested that a similar trick was performed before Pharoah. Exodus vii: 9-12. Despite its venom, the asp was regarded as the sacred guardian of temples. It is supposed to have been another kind of asp, really a viper, which was smuggled in to Queen Cleopatra in a basket of fruit. The story is that she plunged her bare arm into the basket, preferring to die by the bite of a serpent, rather than walk the streets of Rome in chains to grace the triumph of Augustus. See Cobra ; Cleopatra
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or ASPIC, the kind of serpent peculiar to Egypt and Libya, which has obtained great celebrity from having been chosen by Cleopatra to give her an easy death. Its poison is so quick and deadly in its operation that it kills without a possibility of applying any remedy. It is believed to have been the naia haje. It is the same genus as the cobra capello, but differs in having the neck less wide, and having the color greenish, bordered with brown. It is probably the asp (aspis) of the New Testament (Rom iii: 13). The common asp or chersæa (vipera aspis) is olive above, with four rows of black spots. Its poison is severe. It is common in southern Europe, the Alpine region, and is found as far north as Sweden.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The natural history holds up: the Egyptian asp or haje is still classed as Naja haje, the Egyptian cobra, and the European "common asp" is still Vipera aspis. What has gone is Collier's 1921 confidence that the venom "kills without a possibility of applying any remedy" — antivenom serum against cobra bite was first produced by Albert Calmette in the 1890s, and polyvalent African antivenoms are standard treatment today, though bites are still fatal without prompt care. The Cleopatra story that gives the animal its fame is now widely doubted; scholars note that an adult Egyptian cobra runs well over a metre and is awkward to smuggle in a fruit basket, and many suspect a drug or poison mixture instead. Collier's northern limit of Sweden belongs to the adder, Vipera berus, rather than to the asp viper, which stops well short of Scandinavia.
Written for this edition, 2026.