In monumental applications, the heraldic plants are always used to stress the totality or completeness of the land of Egypt. They therefore always turn up together, as a pair. Unlike in the script however, the heraldic plant to represent Upper Egypt in these applications appears not always to be one and the same species.

The oldest (and most widespread) of these monumental uses is in a vignette called Sma Tawy: “Uniting the Two Lands”. Originally, this vignette consisted of just three elements: the two heraldic plants, with between them the hieroglyph smA: “to unite”. Soon however, the stalks of the plants are shown knotted together around the smA-sign, thereby stressing the bond.

The next development is the adding of two figures, actively joining the plants together. These could be either the Two Kingdom’s patron gods (Horus and Seth, or Horus and Thoth: Osiris was iconographically not suited for such activities), or two portly fecundity figures, carrying on their heads a tuft of the same plants as they were tying together.

The latter figures are sometimes called “heraldic gods”, “Nile gods” or “the gods of Upper and Lower Egypt” - but the fact that they were identified by the same plants as the Two Lands, shows them to be the personifications of those Lands. They stand on a par with the personified estates on reliefs in Old Kingdom mastabas. Their stout figures and heavy breasts express the land’s fertility. (The demarcation line between a god and a personification is a complex one. For a full treatment, see the chapter about the goddess Amentet in Three Egyptian Gods: Amentet, Andjety & Anubis, elsewhere on this site).

The appearance of the patron gods of the Two Kingdoms in the Sma Tawy vignette provides a rare connection between the symbolism of the Two Kingdoms, and that of the Two Lands (see the table of symbols in section 14: “A host of symbols”).

In addition to the Sma Tawy, the heraldic plants can appear in several other contexts that center on the dichotomy of the Two Lands. We will therefore take a look at three different applications in turn:

§        In the Sma Tawy vignette: sections 20 till 22.

§        As a means to identify the so-called “Nile gods”: section 23.

§    And some other, rarer applications as a symbolic motif (to be carefully distinguished from the earlier mentioned decorative uses of lotus and papyrus on furniture and household implements): section 24.