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Scorpion c. 3100 BC

Scorpion, often called Scorpion II, was a king in Upper Egypt shortly before Narmer. He is known above all from a large limestone macehead found in the temple at Hierakonpolis in 1897–98, now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. On it a king in the white crown of Upper Egypt holds a hoe beside a waterway, perhaps cutting a canal in a ritual or founding a shrine. A rosette and a scorpion stand in front of his face. Most scholars read them as his name, though not all. Many see him as Narmer's predecessor or rival, and a few as Narmer himself under another name. He is a different king from Scorpion I, whose tomb at Abydos is a century or more older.

Name on the macehead: Scorpion

wḥꜥ or srq (uncertain)

A scorpion beside a seven-petalled rosette. The rosette may be a royal mark rather than part of the name, and how the scorpion was read is unknown. No serekh of his is known for certain.

Sign by sign

Scorpion L7srqt The scorpion goddess Serqet (Selket), who protected against stings and bites. On the Scorpion Macehead it writes the name of King Scorpion.

Now draw this name yourself

Where to see Scorpion's name today

Museum

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford holds some of the earliest royal writing from Egypt, found at Hierakonpolis in 1897 to 1899: the Narmer and Scorpion maceheads and a seated statue of Khasekhem. Two thousand years later in date, a sandstone shrine of the Kushite king Taharqa from Kawa in Nubia stands whole in the gallery, its walls covered in his name.

Names of gods (Ra, Amun, Ptah) are written first out of respect, even when they are read later. Dates are approximate; we follow Ian Shaw (ed.), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000).