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.

Different serekhs on different types of object display countless variations of the façade decor in its complexity and detail.

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.

[6] 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.

[8] A serekh incised or painted in ink on a vessel denoted that the contents were the produce and/or property of the royal court.

[9] The serekh containing the king's name was used on a variety of objects and made a fundamental statement of royal ideology.

All of these names reveal the warlike iconography of the earliest royal monuments from the period of state formation.

[14] 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.

For reasons which remain unclear, Seth attained particular prominence in the late Second Dynasty, temporarily replacing, then joining, Horus as the god atop the royal serekh.

[17] 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.

It referred to a god named 'the golden one' or, perhaps more likely, 'he of Nubt (Naqada)', the usual epithet of Seth in historic times.

This is emphasized by the wording of the inscription: 'He of Nubt has handed over the Two Lands to his son, the dual king Peribsen'.