Hilary Wilson on… Birds in fine feather

This article is from Ancient Egypt issue 154

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Ancient Egyptian artists were keen observers of the natural world.

The vivid tomb images depicting life along the Nile – hunting, fishing, and tending the fields – prove that ancient Egyptian artists were keen observers of the natural world. The information they provide allows modern botanists, ornithologists, and zoologists to build a detailed picture of Egypt’s ancient ecology. Analysis of such artistic nuances as variations in size, shape, and colouration can provide hints to species identification. Most tomb and temple paintings and reliefs were produced to serve ritual functions rather than being purely decorative. Consequently, artists were constrained by protocols regarding the hierarchies of representation, and design and composition were dictated by the nature of the location and the space available, resulting in the stylisation and simplification of natural scenes. An understanding of the purpose for which an image was created, and an appreciation of the artistic conventions that governed the artists’ work, are essential for any researcher investigating Egypt’s flora and fauna.

Loss of colour

The Old Kingdom tombs and pyramid complexes of Saqqara and Giza, and the Fifth Dynasty sun temples, are especially famous for the quality and vivacity of their reliefs. In their original state, such images would have been painted, but the loss of colour over the centuries, whether by natural deterioration or human action, has resulted in a loss of detail that is particularly apparent in the depictions of birds. Among the wild birds of the papyrus swamps or the captive fowl in poultry yards, some, such as storks, ibis, and pelicans, are recognisable by their distinctive body shapes alone, while others, including pigeons, ducks, and geese, are generic bird types that, without more specific details (especially plumage colouring) are more difficult to differentiate into species and subspecies.

The ‘Meidum Geese’

Colour variations depend on such things as a bird’s age, the season of the year, its diet, and its habitat. The range of pigments used and colour-mixing skills differed markedly between artists and according to local traditions. Among the oldest Egyptian bird paintings is the frieze of geese from the Fourth Dynasty tomb of Itet at Meidum. Although the birds are depicted according to the canon of representation – in profile, with tails seen from above – their plumage is painted realistically, with subtle tones of grey and brown. This allows us to identify three distinct species: the white-fronted goose (Anser albifrons), the bean goose (Anser fabalis), and the red-breasted goose (Branta ruficollis). Certain inaccuracies, for instance in the colour of the legs and bills of the red-breasted geese, can be forgiven because of the artist’s otherwise careful attention to detail.

The Meidum painting of red-breasted geese, created within the artistic conventions of its time, is the only verified image of this attractive bird in Egyptian art, although it is possible that other goose-shaped birds in uncoloured reliefs may represent the same species. Due to environmental changes and increased human occupation since the Old Kingdom, the red-breasted goose had long been a rare winter visitor to Egypt by the time of its last sighting in the late 19th century.

Doves or pigeons?

Reliefs that have lost their colour, or were originally painted with a limited palette can offer only a general impression of a bird’s plumage. Birds flying above the papyrus marshes in a scene from Niuserra’s sun temple can be identified as a type of pigeon or dove by their body shape and features picked out in grey paint, while carved details, like the markings on the necks of pigeon-shaped birds in uncoloured tomb reliefs suggest their more precise identification as turtle doves (Streptopelia turtur).

Wildfowling

In scenes of wildfowling or the trapping of water birds, many different species of ducks and geese are readily identifiable, along with other inhabitants of the marshlands, such as egrets, herons, and kingfishers. The striking pied kingfisher (Ceryle rudis), still commonly seen along the Nile, is often depicted hovering, beak down, or diving for fish, and is recognisable even without its distinctive black-and-white plumage. However, other details of the bird’s behaviour appear to be less well observed, even highly inaccurate in some cases. A kingfisher may be shown with mantled wings sheltering its eggs in a stylised cup-shaped nest built within a papyrus clump, or diving at predators that threaten its young. Since kingfishers raise their families out of human sight in tunnels bored into the banks of a river or canal, this image represents an idealisation, probably related to funerary concepts of rebirth, regeneration, and the fertility of the land.

Trapping

Scenes of trapping songbirds in orchards or gardens represent both the control of nature and the protection of significant food resources.

In Hetepherakhty’s tomb chapel, birds identifiable by shape, but no longer by colour, such as golden orioles (Oriolus oriolus), are captured by netting the sycamore fig tree in which they are feeding. The living birds are then crated, presumably destined for the table. Occasionally, a hoopoe (Upupa epops or possibly Upupa epops africana), another species with colourful plumage, was caught up in the same nets. Hoopoes are birds of woodland and farmland and, being insectivores, would not normally compete with orioles. Although not waterbirds, hoopoes are often shown frequenting, and even nesting in, stands of papyrus.

In a scene in his Beni Hasan tomb, Khnumhotep is preparing to spring a clap net to trap a colourful array of wildfowl, while being watched by birds from nearby acacia trees. All the tree-roosting birds are illustrated in their finest breeding plumage which, like the hoopoe’s cinnamon-brown body, black-and-white barred wings, and characteristic fan-like crest, are diagnostic of individual species. In real life, the bird’s crest is only raised in flight, and the Beni Hasan artist has shown its tail as forked rather than rounded, features by which a hoopoe can be identified in unpainted scenes. This is further evidence of artistic licence since the hoopoe nests in holes in tree trunks or gaps in walls, as beautifully illustrated in Howard Carter’s watercolour of a hoopoe in a crevice at Deir el-Bahri.

Birds as pets?

Live hoopoes are often shown being held by their wings by children, suggesting they were kept as pets, and in the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties, a hoopoe held by a tomb-owner’s son possibly symbolised the boy’s status as his father’s heir.

All images: Hilary Wilson (HW), unless otherwise stated