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.

A serekh was an ornamental vignette combining a view of a palace façade and a plan (top view) of the royal courtyard. The term serekh derives from the Egyptian word for "façade". Different serekhs on different types of object display countless variations of the façade decor in its complexity and detail. It seems that no strict artistic rules for the design of the serekh itself existed.

The serekh first appears as an ornamental miniature during the late Gerzeh culture, when it was used as a royal crest only. From the Old Kingdom period onward, the first uses of the full written word appear in old papyri.

A serekh was normally used as a royal crest, accentuating and honouring the name of the pharaoh. Its use can be dated back as early as the Gerzeh culture (c. 3400 BC). 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.

If the word "serekh" was written in full letters (as shown in the infobox above), sometimes accompanied by a miniature of the serekh, it could also be used in text.

One of the most important elements of royal display and identity in ancient Egypt was the king's name, important as pharaohs were concerned that future generations remain aware of their reigns. These were first seen from rulers as early as those of Dynasty 0 and continued to be used by kings throughout the history of ancient Egypt. 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. The serekhs of kings from the 30th Dynasty can also be seen. The serekh represented the king's palace shown in a combination of plan and elevation. The rectangular enclosure represented the plan while the patterned area represented the elevation of the façade. A serekh incised or painted in ink on a vessel denoted that the contents were the produce and/or property of the royal court. The serekh containing the king's name was used on a variety of objects and made a fundamental statement of royal ideology. The king's name was written in hieroglyphs and the Horus falcon, in reference to the sky god Horus, usually surmounted it.

The Horus name is the first of five royal titles that were in use by the Fifth Dynasty. The second title is the (He of the) Two Ladies, representing the king as manifesting, and under the protection of, the goddesses Nekhbet of Elkab and Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt, and Wadjet of Buto in Lower Egypt. The third title is the Horus of Gold, with the Horus falcon above the hieroglyphic sign for gold. The fourth title is often translated as "He of the Sedge and Bee", with the sedge plant symbolic of Upper Egypt and the bee symbolic of Lower Egypt. This is also known as nswt-bìty, a title which expressed the many dualities over which the king exercised rule: Upper and Lower Egypt, the Black Land of cultivation and the Red Land of desert, the realms of day and night, and the natural and the supernatural. The fifth title is Son of Ra. This name claims a direct solar origin for the king as child of the sun-god. The Horus name was commonly written in the serekhs of ancient Egypt. There are a couple of cases in which the Horus name appears without serekhs, and only Peribsen and Khasekhemwy have serekhs without the Horus name.

The king's name was written in hieroglyphs and the Horus falcon, in reference to the god Horus, usually surmounted it. As a result, the king's name in the serekh came to be known by Egyptologists as his 'Horus name.' The writing of the king's name within the serekh symbolized the king in his palace as the center of royal administration and power. The serekh as a whole was therefore a symbol of kingship. The presence of the Horus falcon showed that the living king was a manifestation of the god. Additionally, the Horus names of several First Dynasty kings expressed the aggressive authority of Horus, perhaps reflecting the coercive power of kingship at this early stage of Egyptian statehood. Examples of such names are 'Horus the fighter' (Hor-Aha), 'Horus the strong' (Djer), and 'arm-raising Horus' (Qa'a). All of these names reveal the warlike iconography of the earliest royal monuments from the period of state formation. They emphasize an authority based upon military strength and the power of life and death. 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. This led to a slight alteration in the structure of the serekh, solely during the reigns of Peribsen and Khasekhemwy. Since this alteration only occurred during these two reigns, it is seen as an exception, as the succeeding kings returned to the previous iconography.