Pschent (Double Crown)

About Pschent (Double Crown)

The Pschent is the Double Crown of ancient Egypt, the combined headdress formed by setting the tall conical White Crown of Upper Egypt, the Hedjet, inside the flat-topped Red Crown of Lower Egypt, the Deshret, to produce a single composite crown worn by the king as ruler of the whole united land. Its Egyptian name was Sekhemty, 'the Two Powerful Ones,' referring to the two crowns and the two goddesses associated with them; the familiar term Pschent derives from the Egyptian pa-sekhemty, 'the two powerful,' through its Greek rendering. The Double Crown is the principal symbol of the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under a single king and of the pharaoh's sovereignty over the Two Lands, and it is among the most enduring and recognizable of all Egyptian royal symbols, depicted on monuments from the dawn of the dynastic age to the Roman period.

The two crowns combined in the Pschent each carried its own regional and religious meaning. The White Crown, the Hedjet, was the crown of Upper Egypt, the southern valley, associated with the vulture-goddess Nekhbet of el-Kab; the Red Crown, the Deshret, was the crown of Lower Egypt, the northern Delta, associated with the cobra-goddess Wadjet of Buto. To wear the two together was to claim and embody the rule of both regions, the southern and the northern, the valley and the Delta, joined under one sovereign. The Double Crown thus made visible, in a single object set upon the king's head, the central fact of Egyptian political and religious identity: the unity of the Two Lands under the king.

The earliest secure depiction of the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt appears on the Narmer Palette (c. 3100 BCE), the great ceremonial slate that commemorates, or symbolizes, the unification of Egypt at the beginning of the dynastic period. On one face the king wears the White Crown of Upper Egypt, on the other the Red Crown of Lower Egypt, presenting the unification through the king's possession of both regional crowns. The combined Double Crown, setting the two together as a single headdress, developed as the standard symbol of the unified kingship and appears throughout the dynastic record, worn by the king in countless statues, reliefs, and inscriptions as the emblem of his rule over the whole of Egypt.

The Double Crown belonged to a larger system of royal crowns and headdresses, each with its own associations and contexts of use. The king might be shown in the White Crown alone, the Red Crown alone, the Double Crown, the Blue Crown (Khepresh) of the New Kingdom, the Atef Crown of Osirian contexts, or the Nemes headcloth, among others, and the choice of crown carried meaning appropriate to the scene and the role the king was playing. Within this system the Pschent held the specific and central meaning of unified sovereignty over the Two Lands, and no surviving original example of any of the perishable Egyptian crowns has been found, so that the crowns are known entirely from their depictions and from the texts that mention them.

The Story

The story of the Pschent is the story of the unification of Egypt and the symbolism by which the Egyptians expressed it, for the Double Crown is above all the emblem of the joining of the Two Lands under a single king. Egypt was, in the Egyptian conception, a dual land, composed of two distinct regions: Upper Egypt, the long narrow valley of the Nile to the south, and Lower Egypt, the broad fan of the Delta to the north. These two regions had their own heraldic plants, the sedge of the south and the papyrus of the north; their own tutelary goddesses, the vulture Nekhbet of Upper Egypt and the cobra Wadjet of Lower Egypt; and their own crowns, the White Crown of the south and the Red Crown of the north. The unity of Egypt was understood as the conjunction of these two regions under one sovereign, and the Double Crown was the supreme symbol of that conjunction.

The individual crowns came first. The White Crown, the Hedjet, was a tall, conical, white headdress, the crown of Upper Egypt, and the Red Crown, the Deshret, was a distinctive flat-topped red crown with a tall back and a curling projection rising from the front, the crown of Lower Egypt. Each was worn by the king as ruler of its region, and each was associated with the goddess and the heraldic plant of its half of the land. To wear the White Crown was to be king of the south; to wear the Red Crown was to be king of the north. The crowns thus expressed the duality of Egypt and the king's rule over each of its two parts.

The unification of the two regions under a single king is symbolized on the Narmer Palette, the great ceremonial slate of around 3100 BCE that stands at the threshold of the dynastic age. On its two faces the king Narmer is shown wearing the two crowns in turn, the White Crown of Upper Egypt on one side as he smites an enemy, the Red Crown of Lower Egypt on the other as he reviews the slain. The palette presents the unification of Egypt through the king's possession of both regional crowns, the single king who is ruler of both the south and the north, and it is the earliest secure depiction of the crowns that would be combined in the Double Crown.

The combined Double Crown, the Pschent, developed as the standard symbol of the unified kingship by setting the White Crown inside the Red Crown to form a single composite headdress. The tall white cone of Upper Egypt rises within the red frame of Lower Egypt, and the two together proclaim the king as ruler of both lands at once, the sovereign of the unified Egypt. The Egyptian name Sekhemty, 'the Two Powerful Ones,' captures the dual nature of the crown and its association with the two powerful goddesses of the two lands, and the king who wore the Pschent embodied in his own person the union of the Two Lands that was the foundation of Egyptian kingship.

The two goddesses associated with the crowns watched over the king who wore them. Nekhbet, the vulture-goddess of el-Kab in Upper Egypt, and Wadjet, the cobra-goddess of Buto in Lower Egypt, were the 'Two Ladies,' the Nebty, who protected the king and whose names formed one of the five names of the royal titulary. The cobra of Wadjet, the uraeus, reared on the king's brow, and the vulture of Nekhbet spread her wings above him; the two goddesses, like the two crowns, expressed the duality of Egypt and the king's possession of both its halves. The Double Crown gathered into itself this whole symbolism of the Two Lands, the two crowns, the two goddesses, the two regions joined under one king.

Throughout Egyptian history the Double Crown remained the principal symbol of unified sovereignty, worn by the king in statues, reliefs, and inscriptions as the emblem of his rule over the whole of Egypt. It appears across all the periods of Egyptian history, through the dynasties and through the times of unity and division, and even in the Greek and Roman periods the foreign rulers of Egypt were depicted wearing the Double Crown as the immemorial sign of the Egyptian kingship. The king might wear other crowns for other purposes, the Blue Crown in battle, the Atef in Osirian contexts, the Nemes as the everyday royal headcloth, but the Pschent held the central and specific meaning of the union of the Two Lands, and it was the crown above all others that proclaimed the king as the sovereign of a unified Egypt.

No original example of the Double Crown, or of any of the Egyptian crowns, has survived. The crowns were made of perishable materials, perhaps leather, basketry, felt, or cloth, and none has come down to us; they are known entirely from their depictions in art and from the texts that name them. This absence of surviving originals is a notable feature of the study of the Egyptian crowns, which must be reconstructed from images and inscriptions alone. Yet despite the loss of every physical crown, the Double Crown is among the most familiar of all Egyptian symbols, its image of the White Crown set within the Red Crown instantly recognizable as the emblem of the pharaoh's rule over the united land of Egypt.

Symbolism

The Pschent is built on the symbolism of duality and its unification, the central structure of the Egyptian conception of their land and their kingship. Egypt was understood as a dual entity, the Two Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt, and the Double Crown, combining the crown of the south and the crown of the north, symbolizes the joining of this duality under a single king. The crown makes visible, in one object, the fundamental Egyptian idea that the unity of the land was not the erasure of its duality but the conjunction of its two halves, the king embodying both regions at once.

The White Crown within the Red Crown symbolizes the specific union of Upper and Lower Egypt, the southern valley and the northern Delta. The tall white cone of the Hedjet, the crown of the south, rises within the red frame of the Deshret, the crown of the north, and the two together symbolize the king's possession of both regions. The visual combination of the two distinct crowns into one composite headdress symbolizes the political reality of a unified Egypt governed by a single sovereign who ruled both the valley and the Delta.

The two goddesses associated with the crowns, Nekhbet of Upper Egypt and Wadjet of Lower Egypt, symbolize the protective and tutelary dimension of the duality. The vulture and the cobra, the Two Ladies, watched over the king and embodied the two halves of the land, and their association with the two crowns symbolizes the divine protection of the unified kingship and the religious depth of the Two-Lands ideology. The uraeus-cobra of Wadjet rearing on the king's brow symbolizes the protective fire of the goddess defending the king who wore the crowns.

The Egyptian name Sekhemty, 'the Two Powerful Ones,' symbolizes the power inherent in the union of the two crowns. The name refers to the two crowns and the two goddesses as powers, and the Double Crown gathers these two powers into one, symbolizing the concentration of the powers of both lands in the single person of the king. The king who wore the Sekhemty wore the combined might of the Two Lands and their goddesses, the doubled power of the unified sovereignty.

The Double Crown symbolizes the king's role as the unifier and the guarantor of the unity of Egypt. The unification of the Two Lands was the foundational act of Egyptian kingship and a perpetual royal duty, the king continually re-establishing and maintaining the union of the regions, and the Pschent, worn upon his head, symbolizes this central function of the kingship, the holding-together of the dual land under one crown. The crown is the visible sign of the king as the one in whom the Two Lands are joined.

The absence of any surviving original crown symbolizes, in a sense, the purely symbolic and ideological nature of the Double Crown's importance. Made of perishable materials and known only from depictions, the Pschent existed for the Egyptians less as a particular physical object than as a symbol, an image of unified sovereignty reproduced endlessly in art and inscription. Its power lay not in the crown as artifact but in the crown as sign, the instantly recognizable emblem of the pharaoh's rule over the united land, and its survival through three thousand years of Egyptian art, despite the loss of every physical example, testifies to the enduring force of what it symbolized.

Cultural Context

The Pschent belongs to the system of Egyptian royal regalia and to the ideology of the Two Lands that lay at the heart of the Egyptian conception of their state. Egypt was understood from the earliest times as a dual land, composed of Upper Egypt, the southern Nile valley, and Lower Egypt, the northern Delta, each with its own heraldic plant, tutelary goddess, and crown. The unification of these two regions under a single king, traditionally placed at the beginning of the dynastic age around 3100 BCE, created the Egyptian state, and the maintenance of the union of the Two Lands was a central theme of Egyptian kingship throughout its history. The Double Crown was the principal symbol of this unification and the king's sovereignty over the whole land.

The individual crowns and their regional associations are documented from the dawn of the dynastic period. The Narmer Palette, the great ceremonial slate of around 3100 BCE, shows the king wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt on one face and the Red Crown of Lower Egypt on the other, the earliest secure depiction of the two crowns and a foundational document of the Two-Lands ideology. The combined Double Crown, setting the two crowns together, developed as the standard symbol of the unified kingship and appears throughout the dynastic record, in statues, reliefs, and inscriptions, as the emblem of the king's rule over both regions.

The crowns were embedded in a religious as well as a political symbolism. The White Crown was associated with the vulture-goddess Nekhbet of el-Kab in Upper Egypt, and the Red Crown with the cobra-goddess Wadjet of Buto in Lower Egypt, the two tutelary goddesses of the two lands. These 'Two Ladies,' the Nebty, protected the king, and their names formed one of the five names of the royal titulary, the Nebty-name. The association of the crowns with the goddesses tied the regalia of kingship to the divine protection of the king and to the religious geography of Egypt, the two halves of the land each under its own goddess and crown.

The Double Crown belonged to a larger repertoire of royal crowns and headdresses, each with its own associations and contexts of use, including the White Crown alone, the Red Crown alone, the Blue Crown of the New Kingdom, the Atef Crown of Osirian contexts, and the Nemes headcloth. The choice of crown in a given scene carried meaning appropriate to the king's role, and the Pschent held the specific meaning of unified sovereignty over the Two Lands. The study of the Egyptian crowns, including the Double Crown, has been undertaken in the scholarship on royal regalia and on the symbolism of kingship, notably in the work on crowns in Egyptian funerary literature and royal iconography.

A notable feature of the study of the Egyptian crowns is the absence of any surviving original. The crowns were made of perishable materials, perhaps leather, basketry, felt, or cloth, and none has come down to us, so that the crowns are known entirely from their depictions in art and from the texts that mention them. This absence means that questions about the construction, materials, and even the precise appearance of the crowns must be answered from images and inscriptions alone, and it gives the study of the regalia a particular dependence on the iconographic and textual record. Despite this absence, the Double Crown remains among the most familiar and frequently depicted of all Egyptian symbols, its meaning as the emblem of unified kingship secure across the whole of Egyptian history.

Cross-Tradition Parallels

The Pschent's structural logic — two distinct regional powers combined in a single object worn on the ruler's body — recurs across traditions wherever a polity was assembled from parts that retained their separate identities. The crown that combines two crowns asks a question every composite state must eventually answer: can two regional traditions become one sovereignty without erasing either? The Pschent's answer is architectural: keep both crowns visible, name them separately, but hold them in one object. Other traditions solved the same problem differently.

Japanese — The Three Imperial Treasures as Distributed Sovereignty (Kojiki 712 CE; Nihon Shoki 720 CE)

The Three Imperial Treasures of Japan — the Yata no Kagami (mirror), the Kusanagi no Tsurugi (sword), and the Yasakani no Magatama (jewel) — distribute the symbols of imperial authority across three objects rather than combining them in one. The mirror is associated with Amaterasu, wisdom, and legitimacy; the sword with Susanoo and martial power; the jewel with ancestral blessing. Together they define the emperor's authority from three directions, just as the Pschent's two crowns define the pharaoh's from two. The structural difference is that the three Japanese treasures are distributed across separate sacred objects kept in separate locations, the mirror at Ise, the sword at Atsuta, the jewel at the palace — the unity of sovereignty maintained by the emperor's relationship to all three rather than by combining them physically. The Egyptian crown brings the unity into a single wearable object; the Japanese tradition distributes it across a geography.

Roman — The Two Fasces of the Consul (Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, c. 27 BCE)

Roman consuls, who ruled in pairs as a constitutional check on individual power, each carried a bundle of rods (fasces) surmounted by an axe, the symbol of their imperium. When the two consuls appeared together, both sets of fasces were carried; when one was dominant outside Rome, his fasces were full while the other's were reduced. The Roman system shares with the Pschent the logic of doubled symbols of authority representing the two-part structure of the state — but the Roman fasces are duplicated rather than combined. Where the Pschent achieves unity by merger (one crown inside the other, both visible, one composite object), the Roman system maintains duality as a permanent structure: two consuls, two fasces, two authorities, never merged into one. Egypt's crown says the duality is overcome in the king; Rome's fasces say the duality must be preserved as a safeguard against tyranny.

Norse — Odin's Throne Hlidskjalf and All-Sight (Prose Edda, Gylfaginning 9, c. 1220 CE)

In the Prose Edda, Odin's sovereignty over the nine worlds is expressed through his high seat Hlidskjalf, from which he can see everything that occurs across all realms. The structural question addressed is the same as the Pschent's: how does a ruler claim authority over territories with radically different characters? The Pschent solves it symbolically — wear both crowns, be visibly king of both. Odin solves it through omniscient oversight — see everything, from everywhere, at once. Both are claims to legitimate authority over a divided world. The Egyptian solution is more modest: the pharaoh does not claim to see all of Egypt simultaneously, only to embody both its halves. Odin's solution is more absolute: a ruler whose gaze extends everywhere needs no symbol of combination because his authority is asserted through direct perception rather than symbolic representation.

Aztec — The Two Ruling Lords of Tenochtitlan (Mexica Triple Alliance, attested 15th century CE)

Mexica political structure under the Triple Alliance maintained two supreme offices, the tlatoani (speaker-king) and the cihuacoatl (female serpent, a title for the chief administrator), whose paired authority governed different domains of state power — external military leadership and internal administration respectively. The two offices were symbolically distinguished by their regalia and their spheres. Like the Pschent, the dual structure was a deliberate architectural choice acknowledging two distinct domains of governance rather than forcing them into a single template. Unlike the Pschent, the Aztec duality was never combined into a single crown but remained as two parallel offices. The Egyptian crown claimed that the two halves were one; the Aztec structure maintained their separateness in perpetuity.

Modern Influence

The Double Crown has become among the most recognizable symbols of ancient Egyptian kingship in the modern world, instantly identifiable as the emblem of the pharaoh's rule over the united land. The image of the White Crown set within the Red Crown appears in countless modern depictions of ancient Egypt, in books, films, museum displays, and popular illustration, and it is among the standard visual signs by which the figure of the pharaoh is recognized. The crown's distinctive composite form, combining the tall white cone and the red frame, makes it a memorable and frequently reproduced emblem of Egyptian royalty.

The Double Crown and the ideology of the Two Lands have become central to the modern understanding of ancient Egyptian political and religious identity. The Egyptian conception of their land as a dual entity, the union of Upper and Lower Egypt under a single king, is a standard topic in the study of Egyptian history and kingship, and the Double Crown is the prime symbol through which this conception is explained. The crown's combination of the two regional crowns is regularly cited as the visual expression of the unification of Egypt and the duality-in-unity that characterized the Egyptian state.

The Narmer Palette, with its depiction of the king in the two crowns, has become a touchstone of the modern study of the formation of the Egyptian state and the origins of pharaonic kingship. As the earliest secure depiction of the crowns of the Two Lands and a foundational document of the unification, the palette is among the most studied and most reproduced of all Egyptian artifacts, and the crowns it depicts are central to scholarly and popular accounts of how Egypt became a unified kingdom under a single king.

The absence of any surviving original crown has itself become a point of interest in the modern study and presentation of Egyptian regalia. The fact that no physical example of the Double Crown, or of any Egyptian crown, has been found, despite their ubiquity in art, is regularly noted in discussions of the regalia, and it has stimulated questions and speculation about the materials and construction of the crowns. The crowns' existence solely as depicted symbols, never as surviving objects, is a distinctive feature of their modern study.

Within Egyptology, the Double Crown remains a standard subject in the study of royal regalia, the symbolism of kingship, and the ideology of the Two Lands. It is treated in the scholarship on crowns and royal headdresses, on the formation of the Egyptian state, and on the iconography of the pharaoh, and it is analyzed for its religious as well as its political meaning, the association with the Two Ladies and the symbolism of unified sovereignty. The crown continues to inform the modern understanding of how the Egyptians symbolized their kingship and their land, and the image of the White Crown within the Red Crown endures as one of the defining emblems of ancient Egypt.

Primary Sources

The Pschent and its component crowns are attested from the very beginning of the Egyptian written record. The earliest secure depiction of the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt appears on the Narmer Palette (c. 3100 BCE, Egyptian Museum Cairo, CG 14716): the king wears the White Crown (Hedjet) on the obverse and the Red Crown (Deshret) on the reverse, making this the foundational document of the Two-Lands crown iconography. The palette is published in facsimile and analyzed in detail in Nicolas-Christophe Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, trans. Ian Shaw (Blackwell, 1992), pp. 36–39, and in Toby Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt (Routledge, 1999), pp. 36–40, which situates the crowns within the broader iconographic program of the earliest dynastic monuments.

The textual record for the crown names begins with the Pyramid Texts (c. 2350–2150 BCE). The Hedjet, Deshret, and Sekhemty (Double Crown) are named in several utterances: Utterance 222 in the standard editions refers to the king taking up the White Crown; Utterance 265 mentions the Red Crown; Utterance 599 names the king as 'lord of the Two Crowns.' The editions used are R.O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford, 1969) and James P. Allen, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (SBL Writings from the Ancient World 23, 2005). The Egyptian name Sekhemty, 'the Two Powerful Ones,' and its derivation into the Greek Pschent are discussed in Alan Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 3rd ed. (Griffith Institute, 1957), §265, which gives the Egyptian vocabulary for the crowns and the royal titulary.

The royal titulary within which the crown-symbolism is embedded is the subject of Jürgen von Beckerath, Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen, 2nd ed. (Philipp von Zabern, 1999), the standard reference for royal names from all dynasties. The Two Ladies name (Nebty-name), which paired the vulture Nekhbet with the cobra Wadjet as the tutelary goddesses of the two crowns, is one of the five names of the titulary and is documented from the First Dynasty; Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, §§68–76, gives the titulary structure and its development.

The crowns as depicted in temple reliefs across the dynastic period are documented in the successive volumes of the standard epigraphic surveys, including the Oriental Institute's publications of Medinet Habu and the Epigraphic Survey publications. For the iconographic and symbolic analysis of the crowns, see Richard H. Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian Art (Thames & Hudson, 1992), pp. 189–195, which gives a systematic iconographic treatment of the Egyptian crowns and headdresses, including the Double Crown, and Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (Thames & Hudson, 2003), pp. 212–213, on Nekhbet and Wadjet as the crown-goddesses. Herodotus, Histories II.151 (Loeb, trans. A.D. Godley, 1920) mentions the double crown in the context of Egyptian kingship, providing a classical attestation.

Significance

The Pschent is significant as the principal symbol of the unification of Egypt and the king's sovereignty over the Two Lands, the central fact of Egyptian political and religious identity. By combining the White Crown of Upper Egypt and the Red Crown of Lower Egypt into a single composite headdress, the Double Crown made visible the union of the southern valley and the northern Delta under a single king, and it stood as the supreme emblem of the unified kingship throughout the whole of Egyptian history.

The crown is significant for its expression of the Egyptian conception of their land as a dual entity unified under the king. Egypt was understood as the Two Lands, the conjunction of two distinct regions each with its own crown, goddess, and heraldic plant, and the Double Crown symbolized not the erasure of this duality but its joining, the king embodying both halves of the land at once. This duality-in-unity, made visible in the Pschent, was the foundational structure of the Egyptian state, and the crown is its clearest symbolic expression.

The Pschent is significant for its religious dimension and its association with the Two Ladies, the goddesses Nekhbet and Wadjet of the two lands. The crowns combined in the Pschent were tied to these tutelary goddesses, whose names formed one of the royal names and whose protection watched over the king, and the Double Crown thus gathered into itself the religious geography of Egypt and the divine protection of the unified kingship. The crown was not merely a political emblem but a religious one, bound to the goddesses of the dual land.

The crown is significant for its extraordinary endurance as a symbol across the whole of Egyptian history. Depicted from the dawn of the dynastic age to the Roman period, worn even by the foreign rulers of Egypt as the immemorial sign of the Egyptian kingship, the Double Crown persisted for three thousand years as the emblem of unified sovereignty. This endurance testifies to the depth and stability of the Two-Lands ideology in Egyptian thought and to the power of the Double Crown as its symbol.

The Pschent is significant, finally, for what its study reveals about the nature of the Egyptian regalia and its preservation. The absence of any surviving original crown, the existence of the Double Crown solely as a depicted symbol, makes it a notable case in the study of ancient material culture, known entirely from images and texts rather than from surviving artifacts. Yet despite this absence, the Double Crown is among the most familiar of all Egyptian symbols, its meaning as the emblem of unified kingship secure, a sign whose power lay in its endless reproduction in art and inscription rather than in any single physical object.

Connections

The Pschent is bound most closely to the two crowns it combines, the Hedjet, the White Crown of Upper Egypt, and the Deshret, the Red Crown of Lower Egypt. The Double Crown is the union of these two, the White Crown set within the Red Crown, and it cannot be understood apart from the two regional crowns whose combination it is.

The crown connects to the ideology of the Two Lands and the unification of Egypt, the central structure of the Egyptian conception of their state, and to the goddess Wadjet of Lower Egypt and her counterpart Nekhbet of Upper Egypt, the Two Ladies whose protection watched over the king who wore the crowns. The Double Crown gathered into itself the duality of the land and its tutelary goddesses.

The Pschent connects to the kingship itself and to the theology of the living pharaoh as Horus, for the king who wore the Double Crown as the sovereign of the unified land was the embodiment of Horus on the throne. The crown was the sign of the king's rule over the Two Lands, and the kingship it crowned was the divine kingship of Horus.

The crown connects to the broader system of royal regalia, including the Nemes headcloth worn as the everyday royal headdress and the Atef crown of Osirian contexts, in which the Hedjet was flanked by plumes and ram's horns, as well as the Blue Crown (Khepresh) of New Kingdom martial scenes. Within this system the Pschent held the specific meaning of unified sovereignty, while other crowns served other roles, and the choice among them carried meaning appropriate to the scene.

The Double Crown connects to the Narmer Palette and the iconography of the unification, the earliest secure depiction of the crowns of the Two Lands, and to the broader theme of the king as the unifier and maintainer of the union of Egypt. The crown was the emblem of the foundational act of Egyptian kingship, the joining of the Two Lands under one sovereign.

Finally, the Pschent connects to the religious geography of Egypt, the division of the land into the southern valley and the northern Delta, each with its own crown, goddess, and heraldic plant, and to the iconography of the uniting of the Two Lands, the sema-tawy, in which the heraldic plants of the two regions were bound together around the king's throne. The Double Crown was the headdress that expressed, upon the king's head, the same union of the dual land that the sema-tawy expressed at his throne.

Further Reading