The Saqqara Bird is a

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

-shaped artifact made of

sycamore Sycamore is a name which has been applied to several types of trees, but with somewhat similar leaf forms. The name derives from the ancient Greek ' (''sūkomoros'') meaning "fig-mulberry". Species of trees known as sycamore: * ''Acer pseudoplata ...

wood, discovered during the 1898 excavation of the Saqqara tomb in

Saqqara Saqqara ( ar, سقارة, ), also spelled Sakkara or Saccara in English , is an Egyptian village in Giza Governorate, that contains ancient burial grounds of Egyptian royalty, serving as the necropolis for the ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis. ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

. It has been dated to approximately 200 BCE, and is now housed in the

Egyptian Museum The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum or the Cairo Museum, in Cairo, Egypt, is home to an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities. It has 120,000 items, with a representative amount on display a ...

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...

. The Saqqara Bird has a wingspan of and weighs . Its purpose is not understood because of a lack of period documentation.

Conventional ideas

Some think the Saqqara Bird may be a ceremonial object because the

falcon Falcons () are birds of prey in the genus ''Falco'', which includes about 40 species. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, though closely related raptors did occur there in the Eocene. Adult falcons ...

, the bird after which the Saqqara Bird is modeled, is the form most commonly used to represent several of the most important gods of

Egyptian mythology Egyptian mythology is the collection of myths from ancient Egypt, which describe the actions of the Egyptian gods as a means of understanding the world around them. The beliefs that these myths express are an important part of ancient Egyptia ...

, most notably the falcon deity

Horus Horus or Heru, Hor, Har in Ancient Egyptian, is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities who served many functions, most notably as god of kingship and the sky. He was worshipped from at least the late prehistoric Egypt until the P ...

and the sun deity Ra Horakhty. Others have posited it may have been a

toy A toy or plaything is an object that is used primarily to provide entertainment. Simple examples include toy blocks, board games, and dolls. Toys are often designed for use by children, although many are designed specifically for adults and pet ...

for an elite child, or that it could have functioned as a

weather vane A wind vane, weather vane, or weathercock is an instrument used for showing the direction of the wind. It is typically used as an architectural ornament to the highest point of a building. The word ''vane'' comes from the Old English word , m ...

. Some have also speculated it may have been used as a sort of

boomerang A boomerang () is a thrown tool, typically constructed with aerofoil sections and designed to spin about an axis perpendicular to the direction of its flight. A returning boomerang is designed to return to the thrower, while a non-returning b ...

, as such technology was common and well known in ancient Egypt in the form of a

throwing stick The throwing stick or throwing club is a wooden rod with either a pointed tip or a spearhead attached to one end, intended for use as a weapon. A throwing stick can be either straight or roughly boomerang-shaped, and is much shorter than the ja ...

used for hunting

waterfowl Anseriformes is an order of birds also known as waterfowl that comprises about 180 living species of birds in three families: Anhimidae (three species of screamers), Anseranatidae (the magpie goose), and Anatidae, the largest family, which in ...

. Another hypothesis is that this bird was positioned on the masthead of sacred boats used during the

Opet Festival The Opet Festival (the Beautiful Festival of Opet/Opeth/''heb nefer en Ipet'') was an annual Ancient Egyptian Festival celebrated in Thebes (Luxor), especially in the New Kingdom and later periods, during the second month of the season of Akhet ...

. Reliefs showing those boats are found in the

Temple of Khonsu The Temple of Khonsu is an ancient Egyptian temple. It is located within the large Precinct of Amun-Re at Karnak, in Luxor, Egypt. The edifice is an example of an almost complete New Kingdom temple, and was originally constructed by Ramesses III o ...

Karnak The Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak (, which was originally derived from ar, خورنق ''Khurnaq'' "fortified village"), comprises a vast mix of decayed temples, pylons, chapels, and other buildings near Luxor, Egypt. Construct ...

and date to the late New Kingdom.

Controversial ideas

Some have suggested that the Saqqara Bird may represent evidence that knowledge of the principles of

aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air ...

existed many centuries before such are generally believed to have first been discovered. Egyptian physician and

dowser Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, Petroleum, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia),As translated from one preface of the Kassel experiments, "roughly 10,000 active do ...

Khalil Messiha has speculated that the ancient Egyptians developed the first

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines ...

. According to Kevin Desmond writing about the history of airplanes, no evidence has been found suggesting that these claims are true. As a result, the theory that the Saqqara Bird is a model of a flying machine is not accepted by mainstream Egyptologists.

Richard P. Hallion Richard P. Hallion is Senior Adviser for Air and Space Issues, Directorate for Security, Counterintelligence and Special Programs Oversight, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C. He is responsible for analysis and insight regarding the conceptualization, ...

notes that it is "far too heavy and unstable itself to fly."

Norman Levitt Norman Jay Levitt (August 27, 1943 – October 24, 2009) was an American mathematician at Rutgers University. Education Levitt was born in The Bronx and received a bachelor's degree from Harvard College in 1963. He received a PhD from Princeton Un ...

and

Paul R. Gross Paul R. Gross is a biologist and author, perhaps best known to the general public for ''Higher Superstition'' (1994), written with Norman Levitt. Gross is the University Professor of Life Sciences (Emeritus) at the University of Virginia; he previo ...

comment "The evidence? If you build a copy of balsa wood (rather than the original sycamore), and then add a vertical stabilizer (not present in the original) to the tail, you get a so-so version of a toy glider!"

References

{{reflist, 2 Sculptures of ancient Egypt Out-of-place artifacts Egyptology Pseudoarchaeology Egyptian Museum

Conventional ideas

Controversial ideas

See also

References