Egypt’s Story: Khasekhemwy, the mediator of conflict

Kwack Min-soo The author is the director of the Korea Institute of Egyptology. The names of pharaohs in ancient Egypt were displayed in two main formats. The better-known cartouche was an oval frame shaped like a looped rope that first appeared around 2600 B.C. during the late Third Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Even after ancient Egyptian civilization had effectively come to an end, the cartouche continued to be used to inscribe the names of Roman emperors. It demonstrates how symbolic systems often survive long after the political order that created them has collapsed. Before the cartouche, pharaohs' names were written inside a rectangular frame known as the serekh, which had been used since the Early Dynastic Period. The appearance of the cartouche did not eliminate the serekh. Instead, it remained in use as the special format for the "Horus name," one of the five official names of a pharaoh. It was a case in which a new tradition absorbed and redefined an older symbolic system rather than discarding it entirely. The serekh functioned as a condensed ideological symbol of royal authority. At its center stood the pharaoh's name, beneath which appeared a distinctive pattern of repeated vertical grooves. The design abstracted the recessed architectural decoration of an actual royal palace. At the top, a falcon representing the god Horus was usually depicted. Because the pharaoh was regarded as the earthly manifestation of Horus, the falcon symbolized the divine legitimacy of kingship itself and reinforced the connection between religion and political authority. But there was one moment in ancient Egyptian history when this rule was overturned. Peribsen, a pharaoh of the Second Dynasty, placed above his serekh not the falcon of Horus but a four-legged animal representing the god Seth. In Egyptian mythology, Seth was the greatest rival and adversary of Horus. Peribsen's decision, therefore, amounted to a challenge to the symbolic order underpinning royal authority. The situation became even more intriguing during the reign of the next king, Khasekhemwy. His serekh displayed both the Horus falcon and the animal symbolizing Seth together. Khasekhemwy ruled around 2700 B.C., roughly 400 years after Egypt had emerged as a unified kingdom. The symbolism suggests that tensions and conflicts persisted within the unified state. Rather than erasing competing traditions, Khasekhemwy appeared to incorporate them into a single framework of authority. His serekh thus reveals an attempt to reconcile rival forces through symbolism itself. This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.