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In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oblong enclosure with a vertical line at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name, coming into use during the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty under Pharaoh Sneferu. The Ancient Egyptian word for it was shenu, and it was essentially an expanded shen ring.

• List of all Egyptian Cartouches

The label cartouche was first applied by soldiers who fancied that the symbol they saw so frequently repeated on the pharaonic ruins they encountered resembled a gun cartridge (cartouche in French). In demotic, the cartouche was reduced to a pair of parentheses and a vertical line.

Italian design for a cartouche frame, 16th century

In Early Modern design, since the early 16th century, a cartouche is a scrolling frame device, derived originally from Italian cartoccia. Such cartouches are characteristically stretched, pierced and scrolling (illustration, left). Another cartouche figures prominently in the title page of Giorgio Vasari's Lives, framing a minor vignette with a device of pierced and scrolling papery cartoccia (see illustration).

A cartouche framing device on a London clockmaker's tradecard, ca 1760. Such a "card" (engraved on paper) would be pasted into a clockcase.

The engraved trade card of the London clockmaker Percy Webster (illustration, right) shows a vignette of the shop in a scrolling cartouche frame of Rococo design that is composed entirely of scrolling devices.

In heraldry, a cartouche is an oval-shaped shield, used to display the arms of women as an alternative to the lozenge. It is also often used for the arms of clergy who wish to avoid the military implications of the escutcheon.

In cartography, a cartouche is a decorative emblem on a globe or map usually with information about the manufacturer of the globe or map.

• Cartouche-inscribed Object. Cosmetic palette, Egypt, burial V21, Abydos. (Click on picture.)