Was sceptre
The uas, a staff that Flinders Petrie read as a shepherd’s stick: a sign of guidance and of rule.
Meaning
Petrie gives its meaning as guidance of the flock, noting that shepherds of his own day still used such a form, and its secondary sense as rule at Thebes. As an amulet he found it alone, or together with the Djed pillar and the Ankh. The British Museum’s 1904 guide lists a wooden uas sceptre in its collection, along with wooden staves for ceremonial use that end in forks.
A staff the gods hand to the king
Where Petrie saw a shepherd’s stick, the Global Egyptian Museum describes a staff with a stylised animal head at the top and a forked foot, and calls it a symbol of power. Many gods carry it, and in numerous scenes they pass it to the king, often with the ankh and the djed pillar. On the stela of Khons-hotep in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (5903/5904), Amun-Re and the falcon-headed Montu-Re both hold one.
The sign is also the emblem of the fourth nome of Upper Egypt, the province of Thebes, called Waset in Egyptian, which fits Petrie’s secondary sense of rule at Thebes.
In the tomb and holding up the sky
In a funerary setting, the same source says, the was sceptre was there to provide for the dead, so it was sometimes put in the tomb or painted on the tomb or coffin. The Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum in Hildesheim has a model of one (1674), with the curved animal head at the top and the notched fork at the foot. Its catalogue entry explains that in the Middle Kingdom it became usual to give the dead royal sceptres beside ordinary staffs of office, to equip them with special power and protection, and that box coffins of the time painted such sceptres in their friezes of objects.
The Egyptians pictured the sky resting on four pillars, and those pillars could take the shape of was sceptres.
Write in hieroglyphs
stringmash.comHieroglyphics translatorSpell a name in Egyptian hieroglyphs, letter by letter, and put it in a cartouche.Read next
- Next in Egyptian hieroglyphicsShen ringA circle of cord, the shen: a sign of eternity to Wallis Budge, and of the fullness of life to Flinders Petrie.
- In Egyptian gods and their symbolsSetSet’s symbol is the Set animal, a beast with a head like a donkey’s or a camel’s, pricked ears and a forked, upright tail, which has never been identified. He was the Egyptian god of the desert and disorder, the murderer of Osiris in the later myth, and also the god who beat the serpent Apep each night for the sun.
See also
Eye of Horus, Scarab, Djed pillar, Cartouche, Tyet, Crook and flail.
Sources
- Amulets, illustrated by the Egyptian collection in University College, London, W. M. Flinders Petrie, 1914, Constable and Company, London (Internet Archive), No. 54
- A guide to the third and fourth Egyptian rooms, British Museum, 1904, Internet Archive, Third Egyptian Room
- Was-sceptre, Global Egyptian Museum glossary, The Global Egyptian Museum, Glossary: Was-sceptre
- Stela of Khons-hotep, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 5903/5904, The Global Egyptian Museum, Description
- Modell eines Was-Szepters, Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum, Hildesheim, 1674, The Global Egyptian Museum, Description (German)
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 3, 2026. How we research
Added . Last updated .