Double-headed eagle

Also called the bicephalous eagle

An imperial device; the Byzantine form is the one this page means

Double-headed eagle meaning

The double-headed eagle is an imperial emblem, used by Byzantium and later by states that claimed a kinship with that authority, including the Habsburgs and Russia. Two heads face two directions. A Hittite relief of a two-headed bird is older and is not this court. Warhammer 40,000’s aquila is a later reader, from 1987.

One bird, two heads. An empire’s way of saying it looks both ways.

The name. The English name describes the picture. The Byzantine emblem is the one medieval and modern states inherited when they wanted this picture. Older two-headed birds exist in the ancient Near East. They are not automatically the same device. A device has a court.

Download drawing

Where it comes from

A bird with two heads is a simple idea and an old one. The idea is not the emblem. The emblem, as European power used it, comes through the late Byzantine court: a single eagle with a head to each side, a claim about an empire that had reasons to look east and west, or that wanted to look as if it did. After Constantinople fell, the picture remained useful. The Holy Roman Emperors and the Habsburgs used a double-headed eagle. Muscovy and then the Russian empire used one, with a genealogy they told through Byzantium. Each court changed the wings, the crowns, the shields on the chest. The changes are the history. A single drawing that ignores the chest-shield is a schematic of the type, which is what this lexicon draws. It is not the Austrian state emblem and not the Russian one. Those are living or recent state marks with legal lives. The type is the subject. Ancient Near Eastern seals and Hittite carvings show two-headed birds and two-headed figures. Citing them as “the origin of the Byzantine eagle” overclaims a silhouette. A silhouette can recur. A court adopts a device at a date. This page dates the device to the Byzantine use and treats earlier birds as a caution against a single origin story.

Hellenic

A court, not a species

The eagle is not natural history. Eagles do not grow two heads. The second head is the point, a heraldic sentence about rule that faces two ways. Byzantium is the sentence’s medieval capital. Later capitals quoted it because quotation is how new empires borrow old gravity. The quotation can be documented: marriages, titles, and flags. It should be documented rather than felt. Feeling produces a universal “ancient eagle.” The cabinets of Europe are full of particular eagles. Particular is the accurate mode.

In fiction

game · 1987

An aquila for a fictional empire

Warhammer 40,000 (game, 1987)

Warhammer 40,000, first released in 1987, marks its human empire with a two-headed eagle, the Imperial Aquila. The fiction is explicit about being an empire in decay, and the bird is part of that stage set. Games Workshop’s file is theirs. This lexicon does not draw it. The schematic on this page is a generic two-headed bird of the heraldic type, which is older than the game by centuries and is not a license to copy the game. Players who meet the bird first in a rulebook are meeting a reader. The reader chose Byzantium’s type because a future empire, in that fiction, is built out of reused graves. The reuse is the design. The graves are real heraldry.

Aquila (Warhammer 40,000)

In popular culture

sport · 1929

AEK Athens

The Constantinople refugees' club carries the Byzantine eagle.

The Constantinople refugees' club carries the Byzantine eagle, which is a later reading of the mark.

Source

other · 1899

Edvard Isto, The Attack

The Russian eagle tears the law book from the Finnish Maiden.

The Russian eagle tears the law book from the Finnish Maiden, which is a later reading of the mark.

Source

other · 1760s

Scottish Rite Freemasonry

The 'Double Headed Eagle of Lagash' emblem for the Kadosh degree.

The 'Double Headed Eagle of Lagash' emblem for the Kadosh degree, which is a later reading of the mark.

Source

Worth knowing

Gordon Doherty's novel Strategos invented the 'Haga' bird, which has no scholarly basis. Source

Questions

What does the Double-headed eagle mean?

Where does the Double-headed eagle come from?

A bird with two heads is a simple idea and an old one. The idea is not the emblem.

Why does Warhammer 40,000 use the double-headed eagle?

Near this

Sources

Named when the entry depends on a text, a date, or a standard. Catalog numbers are not invented.

Your margin

Private. It stays in this browser and never joins the canon.

symbol.wiki, edited as Sigilla. Last reviewed 20 October 2026. A reading of public tradition, not a ruling.