Triple-headed eagle

The triple-headed eagle, sometimes called the three-headed eagle, is a mythical or heraldic bird, essentially an expanded version of the double-headed eagle. In the apocryphal Latin Ezra, the high priest Ezra dreams of a three-headed eagle. A Chechen fairy tale features a three-headed eagle as a monstrous enemy the hero must defeat. In Yakut and Dolgan folklore, the eagle named Öksökö (Өксөку) can have either two or three heads.

Unusually, a three-headed eagle—or an eagle with two extra heads on its wingtips—appears as the coat of arms for minnesinger Reinmar von Zweter (c. 1200–1248) in the Codex Manesse (c. 1300). A separate depiction of the Reichsadler with three heads exists in Conrad Grünenberg's Wappenbuch (1483). A three-headed bird (not necessarily an eagle) also appears in the Middle Low German illustrated manuscript Splendor Solis from the 1530s. The sceptre of Tsar Michael I of Russia was decorated with a three-headed eagle, and similar designs appear in Russian symbolism.

The 1911 literary anthology Lado opens with Dmitriy Vergun's poem "Slavic Eagle" (Славянский орел), where the three heads represent three races that shaped Russia: a "western" head for the Varangians, an "eastern" head for the Mongols, and a central head for the Slavs. A. Ferris's The Three-Headed Eagle (1944) discusses the destiny of European peoples, drawing on the Latin Ezra.