1
Crowns, Egyptian
KATJA GOEBS
FUNCTION
Egyptian crowns and headdresses were an
essential part of royal and divine dress and rega-
lia. Curiously, few actual examples of head-
dresses are preserved. The size and seemingly
precarious fastening of several crown types as
depicted (e.g., the high feather and horned
crowns and their later composites; Figure 1)
suggest that many were not actually worn, or
must have looked different in reality; some
surviving royal headdresses represent crown
elements (e.g., Double Feathers, see below) at a
Figure 1 The god Horus wearing the Double
Crown, signifying kingship over Upper and Lower
Egypt. Wall painting from the Tomb of Horemheb.
Thebes, Egypt. © Ancient Art & Architecture
Collection Ltd/Alamy.
The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, First Edition. Edited by Roger S. Bagnall, Kai Brodersen, Craige B. Champion, Andrew Erskine,
and Sabine R. Huebner, print pages 1847–1849.
© 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah15092
much smaller scale (Figure 2), and are perhaps
indicative of a widespread practice. This under-
lines the emblematic significance of regalia,
which virtually functioned as “hieroglyphs”
within “iconographic sentences” that could be
read and altered by varying their constituent
elements. Such an interpretation is supported
by the tendency, especially from the New
Kingdom onwards, to combine royal crowns
into complicated composite headdresses to
express new, or multiple, aspects of kingship. In
royal (and divine) iconography, the occurrence
and form of particular crowns may be used as a
dating criterion, while their distribution within a
single artistic or architectural complex can reveal
underlying decorational principles, including
aspects of geography (cardinal points, Upper
and Lower Egypt) or ritual reciprocity between
officiant and god (e.g., Myśliwiec 1985).
Conferral of the crowns by the head of
the pantheon symbolized the adoption of a
divine role by the king; this idea extended to
funerary beliefs, where the deceased became
divinized by means of accepting crowns in
both texts and representations (Goebs 2008).
Accordingly, crowns later became a popular
motif for protective amulets.
FORM AND DEVELOPMENT
Egyptian rulers were depicted wearing
distinctive headdresses from the Predynastic
period onwards. The best-known crowns
are the White and Red crowns, which
are already shown as complementary on the
NARMER palette (Goebs 2001). Especially when
combined as the Double Crown , they
express the dual aspect of Egyptian kingship,
including rule over the united Upper and
Lower Egypt. They were, moreover, thought
to be embodied in the tutelary goddesses
NEKHBET and Wadjyt (see WADJYT, WADJET).
Owing to the Egyptians’ reluctance to dis-
card any culturally meaningful item or idea,
when new crowns were introduced at various
historical junctures these were integrated into
the existing canon of royal representation
2
Figure 2 The god Sobek wearing a crown
consisting of horns similar to those of Khnum, a
sundisk, and a pair of feathers. Relief from the Sobek
and Horus Temple at Kom Ombo, Egypt. © Ancient
Art and Architecture Collection Ltd/Alamy.
rather than replacing older forms. By the New
Kingdom, a sequence of coronation scenes
shows HATSHEPSUT wearing ten different head-
dresses. By the Ptolemaic period, crown
types had become so variegated that it is
impossible to give an exact number (e.g.,
Vassilika 1989).
Hatshepsut’s sequence includes, besides the
White and Red crowns, the blue and golden
nemes (see TUTANKHAMUN); the white or
golden khat or afnet ; the Blue Crown
(khepresh, derived from the earlier simple cap);
a short wig (ibes) with headband and uraeus
(seshed); the horned atef (in the Amarna
period this crown is replaced by a tripled var-
iant, the hemhem ); the henu , a com-
bination of the Amun crown base that
appeared when the Theban god Amun rose to
prominence in the Middle Kingdom (see
AMUN-RE), and a pair of falcon or ostrich feathers
as well as ram’s horns and a solar disc; this
crown may stand in for the older Double
Feather Crown (shuty) . Hatshepsut’s
sequence comes to an end with a rare
combination headdress called the Crown of
Re (Figure 1). This set expresses multiple
aspects of the kingship, which encompasses
both the terrestrial and the cosmic realms.
The kerchiefs and circlets are always
augmented by the so-called uraeus, image of
the protective and fire-spitting serpent goddess
Wadjyt, embodiment of the solar disc. Texts
indicate that all crowns were ultimately
thought to be images of Wadjyt. After the
Old Kingdom, the uraeus was an integral part
of all crowns, and by the end of the 6th Dynasty
could be worn by royal women. Queens wore a
separate set of headdresses with their own
divine and cosmic associations. Most impor-
tant were those linked with the goddesses MUT
(the oldest being the Vulture Cap; see, e.g.,
Troy 1986: 117 ff.; Roth 2001: 107 ff.) and
HATHOR (Isis-Sothis Double Feather Crown
from the 13th Dynasty onwards; e.g., Troy
1986: 126–9; Aufrère 1997; Roth 2001: 248).
Headbands and platform crowns with floral
motifs were common for royal women of
lower rank, and – from the 18th Dynasty
onwards – gazelle motifs, possibly borrowed
from Syria (Troy 1986: 129–30). The few
women who became pharaohs in their own
right (see SOBEKNEFRU; HATSHEPSUT) adopted full
male regalia and crowns, and – at various junc-
tures – the range of queenly crowns was
expanded to include elements of the male
set, likely to express a new and enhanced role
of the queen. Notable are the Amarna and
Ptolemaic periods (see NEFERTITI; Ertman
1976; Dils 1998).
DISSEMINATION IN THE
ANCIENT WORLD
Egyptian crowns were popular not only in
Egypt but throughout the ancient Near East.

From the Middle Kingdom onward, rulers and
deities in the “Egyptianized” Levantine areas
(e.g., BYBLOS) were shown wearing Egyptian (or
Egyptianizing) crowns, including the White,
Double, and Atef crowns (Eder 1999). They
also appear in Mesopotamia (e.g., Barnett
1975, pls. I, III, CXXXIV) and even Persia.
A relief at PASARGADAI (Gate R) shows (purport-
edly) Cyrus the Great wearing a Hemhem
Crown (Kuhrt 2007: 91). In Nubia, Egypt-
ianizing crowns and headdresses are found
until the fifth century CE (Kormysheva 1992:
68). This proliferation of Egyptian royal para-
phernalia attests to the important and domi-
nant cultural role that Egypt played in the
ancient Near East, and to the functionality and
effectiveness of its “divine king dogma,”
adopted by virtually all the peoples who con-
quered Egypt. Both Ptolemies and Roman
emperors continued to use Egyptian crowns in
their royal imagery in Egypt.
SEE ALSO: Jewelry, Pharaonic Egypt; Kingship,
Pharaonic Egypt; Queens, Pharaonic Egypt;
Titulary, Pharaonic Egypt.
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Abubakr, A. M. J. (1937) Untersuchungen über die
altägyptischen Kronen. Glückstadt.
Aufrère, S. H. (1997) “La Couronne d’Isis-Sôthis, les
reines du Phare et la Lointaine.” Égypte,
Afrique et Orient 6: 15–18.
Barnett, R. D. (1975) A catalogue of the
Nimrud ivories with other examples of ancient
Near Eastern ivories in the British Museum,
2nd ed. London.
Collier, S. A. (1996) “The crowns of Pharaoh:
their development and significance in ancient
Egyptian kingship.” PhD diss., University of
California.
3
Dils, P. (1998) “La Couronne d’Arsinoé II
Philadelphe.” In W. Clarysse, A. Schoors, and
H. Willems, eds., Egyptian religion, the last
thousand years: studies dedicated to the memory
of Jan Quaegebeur, vol. 2: 1299–1330. Leuven.
Eder, C. (1999) “Einfluss ägyptischer
Königsikonographie in der Levante zu Anfang
des 2. Jahrtausends v. Chr.” In R. Gundlach and
W. Seipel, eds., Das frühe ägyptische Königtum:
Akten des 2. Symposiums zur ägyptischen
Königsideologie in Wien 24.–26.9.1997: 125–53.
Wiesbaden.
Ertman, E. L. (1976) “The cap-crown of Nefertiti:
its function and probable origin.” Journal of
the American Research Center in Egypt 13: 63–6.
Goebs, K. (1995) “Untersuchungen zu Funktion und
Symbolgehalt des nms.” Zeitschrift für Ägyptische
Sprache und Altertumskunde 122: 154–81.
Goebs, K. (2001) “Crowns.” In D. B. Redford, ed.,
The Oxford encyclopedia of ancient Egypt, vol. 1:
321–6. Oxford.
Goebs, K. (2008) Crowns in Egyptian funerary
literature: royalty, rebirth, and destruction. Oxford.
Johnson, S. B. (1990) The cobra goddess of ancient
Egypt: Predynastic, Early Dynastic, and Old
Kingdom periods. London.
Kormysheva, E. (1992) “The royal crowns of Kush:
an extended review.” Beiträge zur Sudanforschung
5: 55–71.
Kuhrt, A. (2007) The Persian Empire: a corpus of
sources from the Achaemenid period, vol. 1. London.
Myśliwiec, K. (1985) “Quelques remarques sur les
couronnes à plumes de Thoutmosis III.” In
P. Posener-Kriéger, ed., Mélanges Gamal Eddin
Mokhtar, vol. 2: 149–60. Cairo.
Roth, S. (2001) Die Königsmütter des Alten Ägypten
von der Frühzeit bis zum Ende der 12. Dynastie.
Wiesbaden.
Török, L. (1987) The royal crowns of Kush: a study
in Middle Nile Valley regalia and iconography in
the 1st millennia BC and AD. Oxford.
Troy, L. (1986) Patterns of queenship in ancient
Egyptian myth and history. Uppsala.
Vassilika, E. (1989) Ptolemaic Philae. Leuven.