Ta, literally,
"North-land," symbolized by the serpent. Two great ancient cities or
capitals were respectively known as Annu Meht, "Annu of the North," and
Annu Qemat, "Annu of the South." The kings of Egypt styled themselves
Suten-Net, "King of the North and South" and Nebtaui, "lord of the two
earths." As such the king wore the double crown made up of the tesher or
net, the red crown of Northern or Lower Egypt and the hetet or het, the
white crown of Southern or Upper Egypt (The Nile, p. 27).

It will be shown further on that the high white and low red crowns were
respectively worn by the king and the queen at a certain period of
Egyptian history. It is well known that, in numerous pictorial
representations, the Egyptian men are painted with red, but the women with
white skins. The above facts show that there existed a curious association
of red with the north and the male sex, and of white with the south and
the female sex.(106)

It is a familiar fact that the Egyptian hieroglyph and determinative sign
for town, city or village consisted of a circle with four divisions. The
usual form of this sign, the phonetic value of which is nu or nut, is
shown as fig. 60, 1, _a_. On a bas-relief preserved at the Ashmolean
Museum, Oxford, I noted the variant 1, _b_. It is interesting to collate
these signs with the cross-symbols (2) which express the sound of uu, un,
and ur, and to note that the sign for a capital in Egypt contains a
division into four=un or ur, and that the latter word is actually the
familiar name of the famous centre in Babylonia where cities laid out in
the form of a square and "four-god cities" existed, and the kings were
termed "lords of the four regions" and "kings of Sumer and Akkad," the two
ancient divisions of the Babylonian state.

It thus appears doubly significant that, in Egyptian, the word ur
signifies "great, great one" and is also the name of a god, which is
expressed in hieroglyphic writing by the cross, a mouth and a seated god,
the determinative for divinity. What is more, ur-u=chiefs, ur-t=the name
of a crown and ur-t=those who rest, all of which words show that the
Egyptian ur was associated with the idea of divinity, greatness, crowned
chieftainship, repose and the cross-symbol which is incorporated in nut,
the sign for capital or city.

The fact that the symbols for the two great divisions of ancient Egypt,
the red crown of Northern or Lower Egypt, and the white crown of Southern
or U