The Golden Falcon of Hierakonpolis
The great gold head of the falcon god Horus found in the Main Deposit of the temple at Hierakonpolis (ancient Nekhen), the cult centre of Horus and one of the oldest religious and political capitals of Egypt. Made of beaten gold and fixed to a copper statue of a falcon, it is set with polished obsidian eyes and crowned with a twin-plumed headdress and a royal uraeus cobra on the brow. Long dated to about 3100 BCE and linked to the era of the Narmer Palette, which was found in the same cache, it is now more commonly assigned by scholars to the Old Kingdom, around the Sixth Dynasty (c. 2345-2181