Древнеегипетский серех: царский герб и имя фараона

Type of ancient Egyptian heraldic crest
the character in the Schechter Letter

In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a serekh is a rectangular enclosure representing the niched or gated façade of a palace surmounted by (usually) the Horus falcon, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The serekh was the earliest convention used to set apart the royal name in ancient Egyptian iconography, predating the later and better known cartouche by four dynasties and five to seven hundred years.

A serekh was an ornamental vignette combining a view of a palace façade and a plan (top view) of the royal courtyard. The term serekh derives from the Egyptian word for "façade". Different serekhs on different types of object display countless variations of the façade decor in its complexity and detail. It seems that no strict artistic rules for the design of the serekh itself existed.

The serekh first appears as an ornamental miniature during the late Gerzeh culture, when it was used as a royal crest only. From the Old Kingdom period onward, the first uses of the full written word appear in old papyri.]] A serekh was normally used as a royal crest, accentuating and honouring the name of the pharaoh. Its use can be dated back as early as the Gerzeh culture (c. 3400 BC). The hieroglyphs forming the king's name were placed inside a rectangular extension atop the serekh, which represented the royal courtyard. Additionally, the falcon of the god Horus, or in a few cases the Set animal, topped the serekh, showing the celestial patron of the named king. These were first seen from rulers as early as those of Dynasty 0 and continued to be used by kings throughout the history of ancient Egypt. For example, a serekh of Senusret I, who was a king during the Twelfth Dynasty, has been found and is now displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The serekhs of kings from the 30th Dynasty can also be seen. The serekh represented the king's palace shown in a combination of plan and elevation. The rectangular enclosure represented the plan while the patterned area represented the elevation of the façade. A serekh incised or painted in ink on a vessel denoted that the contents were the produce and/or property of the royal court. The serekh containing the king's name was used on a variety of objects and made a fundamental statement of royal ideology. The king's name was written in hieroglyphs and the Horus falcon, in reference to the sky god Horus, usually surmounted it. The third title is the Horus of Gold, with the Horus falcon above the hieroglyphic sign for gold. The fourth title is often translated as "He of the Sedge and Bee", with the sedge plant symbolic of Upper Egypt and the bee symbolic of Lower Egypt. The fifth title is Son of Ra. The Horus name was commonly written in the serekhs of ancient Egypt. There are a couple of cases in which the Horus name appears without serekhs, and only Peribsen and Khasekhemwy have serekhs without the Horus name.

[[Image:Egypte louvre 290. jpg|thumb|240px|right|Serekh of Pharaoh Djet, 1st Dynasty, with his name framed by the royal serekh and surmounted by the Horus falcon. This particular stela is from his tomb at Abydos and can now be found at The Art Archive/Musée du Louvre Paris/Dagli Orti. The emphasis in the Second Dynasty, however, began to change possibly due to the periods of instability that the kings faced, though the exact reason is still disputed. This led to a slight alteration in the structure of the serekh, solely during the reigns of Peribsen and Khasekhemwy. Since this alteration only occurred during these two reigns, it is seen as an exception, as the succeeding kings returned to the previous iconography.

The earliest serekhs were empty because the symbol alone relayed the necessary message of royal power. Over time, the king began to write an epithet within the serekh. These serekhs were dominated by the symbol of Horus. During the Second Dynasty only, changes in the formulation of the Horus name to a Seth name and then a Horus and Seth name were seen. When the name Peribsen, who was the penultimate king of the Second Dynasty, was written in a serekh, it was surmounted, not by the usual Horus falcon hieroglyph, but by the Seth animal, a hound or jackal like creature with a wide, straight tail. Peribsen thus made a visual statement that he was the earthly embodiment of Seth. The addition to Khasekhem's name is further evidence that he was trying to merge the ideas of both Horus and Seth. While the validity of this proposal is debatable, Khasekhemwy's epithet from seal impressions supports this notion. It is interpreted as 'the Two Lords are at peace in him' which can be viewed as though he resolved some internal conflict, especially if 'Two Lords' are seen as referring to Horus and Seth and their followers, respectively. Nonetheless, it seems likely that foreign relations reached a new level under Khasekhemwy, since a seal impression of his reign showed the first occurrence of the title ìmì r3 h3st which means 'overseer of foreign land(s)'. It strongly suggests the imposition of Egyptian hegemony on foreign territory. The change of the deity image on a serekh was significant: While the king's name sometimes appeared in a serekh without an image of a deity above, no deity other than Horus is so far known to have occurred on the serekh of a king until the reign of Peribsen. Due to evidence that Peribsen's stelae were subjected to erasure of the Seth animals, it has been inferred that whatever reasons Peribsen had for substituting his falcon failed to win acceptance among royal generations after Khasekhemwy.