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A cartouche, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, is an oblong enclosure with a vertical line at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The Ancient Egyptian word for it was shenu; the label cartouche was first applied by Napoleonic soldiers who fancied that the symbol they saw so frequently repeated on the pharaonic ruins they encountered resembled a gun cartridge.
In demotic, the cartouche was reduced to a pair of parentheses and a vertical line.
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.
Cartouche was a French highwayman of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
fr:Cartouche
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