Showing posts with label Threskiornis Aethiopica. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Threskiornis Aethiopica. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 10

Sacred Bird Sacrificed to Thoth

Carol Ann Barsody and Frederic Gleach examine the over 1,500-year-old mummy bird. 
(Image credit: Cornell University)




An ancient Egyptian bird mummy, long forgotten in storage and mislabeled as a hawk, is finally getting its due now that researchers have digitally peered inside its wrappings.


The 1,500-year-old mummy, scientists learned, is not a hawk but likely a sacred ibis (Threskiornis aethiopica) — a wading bird with stilt-like legs and a long curved beak that the ancient Egyptians often sacrificed to Thoth, the god of the moon, reckoning, learning and writing.


"Not only was this once a living creature that people of the day may have enjoyed watching stroll through the water," Carol Ann Barsody, a masters student in archaeology at Cornell University, who spearheaded the project, said in a statement. "It also was, and is, something sacred, something religious."  READ MORE...