A high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) combined with ultraviolet (UV) method for the simultaneous determination of ${alpha}$-cyperone and nootkatone was developed for the quality control of Cyperus rotundus Linne. The separation was performed on a KR100-$5C_{18}$ ($4.6{ imes}250mm$) column, and an elution gradient composed of methanol and water with a flow-rate of 1.0 ml/min. Detection wavelength was set at 254 nm. The optimum extraction for the detection of the ${alpha}$-cyperone and nookatone was achieved by ultrasonic with methanol for an hour. Two marker compounds ${alpha}$-cyperone and nootkatone in Cyperi Rhizoma showed good linearity ($R^2$ >0.999) in the concentration range of $12.5{mu}g/ml$ to $200{mu}g/ml$. The developed method provided satisfactory precision and accuracy with overall intra-day and inter-day variations of 0.04~1.23% and 0.08~0.68%, respectively, and the overall recoveries of 97.45~105.58% for the two compounds analyzed. Additionally, a difference was observed in the cluster analysis and principal component analysis between Cyperi Rhizoma in Korea and China. The result demonstrated that the principal component analysis is useful to distinguish between Cyperi Rhizoma in Korea and China.