Saqqara Bird

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title: "Saqqara Bird" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["sculptures-of-ancient-egypt", "egyptology", "pseudoarchaeology", "egyptian-museum", "saqqara", "1898-archaeological-discoveries", "archaeological-discoveries-in-egypt", "3rd-century-bc-artifacts", "2nd-century-bc-artifacts"] description: "Ancient Egyptian wooden bird" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saqqara_Bird" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Ancient Egyptian wooden bird ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox artifact"]

Field	Value
image	Photo 1-plane front view1.jpg
material	Wood
created	200 BC
location	Cairo, Cairo Governorate, Egypt
discovered_place	Badrashin, Giza, Egypt
discovered_date	1898
width	18 cm
::

| image = Photo 1-plane front view1.jpg | material = Wood | created = 200 BC | location = Cairo, Cairo Governorate, Egypt | discovered_place = Badrashin, Giza, Egypt | discovered_date = 1898 | width = 18 cm ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Photo_2-plane_side_view1.jpg" caption="The bird from the side"] ::

The Saqqara Bird is a model bird made of sycamore wood and mounted on a stick, discovered during the 1898 excavation of the tomb of Pa-di-Imen in Saqqara, Egypt. It has been dated to approximately 200 BCE, and is now housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The Saqqara Bird has a wingspan of 18 cm and weighs 39.12 g. Its purpose is unknown, although it is not capable of flight.

Suggested purposes

The Saqqara Bird may be a ceremonial object because the falcon, 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, most notably the falcon deity Horus and the sun deity Ra Horakhty. Other possibilities are that it may have been a toy for an elite child, or it could have functioned as a weather vane. Another hypothesis is that this bird was positioned on the masthead of sacred boats used during the Opet Festival. Reliefs showing those boats are found in the Temple of Khonsu at Karnak and date to the late New Kingdom.

False claims of aerodynamics

Some have suggested that the Saqqara Bird may represent evidence that knowledge of aerodynamics existed many centuries before its principles are known to have been discovered. Egyptian physician and dowser Khalil Messiha has speculated that the ancient Egyptians developed the first aircraft.

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 rejected by mainstream science. Richard P. Hallion notes that it is "far too heavy and unstable itself to fly". Norman Levitt and Paul R. Gross 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!"

Researchers at the Institute of Aerospace Technology Bremen conducted a CFD simulation of the artifact based on a 3D scan in 2023. The results showed that the artifact has a low maximum glide ratio and thus the glide properties are not sufficient. The center of mass of the artifact is also located at the trailing edge of the wing and thereby behind the neutral point. It is therefore unstable in pitch. In addition, it has an asymmetric lift distribution across the span of the wing, and would roll uncontrollably. The results are not consistent with the suggestion that the Saqqara Bird demonstrates ancient knowledge of aerodynamics.

References

References

1. Messiha, Hishmat. (1972). "Flying in Ancient Egypt". Ministry of Tourism, Department of Publicity.
2. Larry Orcutt. (2001). "Model Airplane?".
3. "Khonsu Temple relief with three sacred boats".
4. The Epigraphic Survey. (1979). "The Temple of Khonsu, Volume 1: Scenes of King Herihor in the Court". The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
5. "2002 Fall". American Society of Dowsers.
6. Messiha, Khalil. (1991). "Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern". Transaction Books.
7. Desmond, Kevin. (20 September 2018). "Electric Airplanes and Drones: A History". McFarland.
8. Hallion, Richard P.. (2003). "Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age, from Antiquity Through the First World War". Oxford University Press.
9. (3 December 1997). "Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science". JHU Press.
10. (2023). "Aerodynamic Investigation on the Artefact "Bird of Saqqara"". Acta Mechanica et Automatica.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::