storkology

[storkology]

Egyptian Hieroglyphs and the Concept of Time

In the Late Predynastic Period of Egypt, the saddle-billed stork was used as the hieroglyph to depict the Egyptian concept of "ba". Now ba is super complicated, so I am going to define is simply as: their concept of the soul, the manifestations of the divine, and divine power. Egyptians of the time held the saddle-billed stork in high regard. Clearly they had good taste.

As the Old Kingdom of Egypt came around, the saddle-billed stork continued to be used as the hieroglyph for ba, even as its definition started to shift. But, as the Old Kingdom waned into the Middle Kingdom, the ba hieroglyph changed from the saddle-billed stork to the body of a different bird with a human head. Look how they massacred my boy.

So what happened? Turns out the Late Dynastic Period ended in around 3100 BCE, or 5100 years ago, and the Old Kingdom lasted from around 2700-2200 BCE, or 4700-4200 years ago, which is a dumb long time ago. In that stretch of around 900 years, the saddle-billed stork went extinct in Egypt! The poor artists that were tasked with depicting the saddle-billed stork had never seen one before, so they decided to change the symbol. The legendary run of the saddle-billed stork hieroglyph, a run I think about every day, lasted three times longer than the existence of the United States, and ended over 2000 years before the birth of Jesus. Egypt was around for so long that our tiny brains cannot comprehend how long it existed.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41812313?read-now=1&seq=11#page_scan_tab_contents

#shoebill stork #stork #egypt #time #anthropology

[storkology]

The Stork Tangents

About four months ago I started a bit with my friend, where I sent her a fact related to storks to her once a day. Along the way I found a load of random info tangentially related to storks, and decided to write them down. I dont know how long this blog will run, and I am only writing all this down so it exists somewhere other than just my brain. With that in mind, here is the first installment of The Stork Tangents:

One of the first interesting tidbits I came across when looking into storks was Ancient Egypt. There is a lot to be said about storks' relationship to Ancient Egypt, but I am going to focus on Alan Gardiner. Gardiner is known for creating a system for understanding and labeling Egyptian hieroglyphs (free link to one of his hieroglyph grammar books below). While storks and hieroglyphs have a wild story worth talking about on this blog, that is a story for another time. Instead I'll be talking about his family.

Alan Gardiner had a daughter, Margaret Gardiner, who was many things, most importantly for this story a socialist. Alan Gardiner also had a son, Rolf Gardiner, who was many things, most importantly for this story a literal Nazi. The family dinners at the Gardiner household must have been an absolute nightmare for everyone involved.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015047473916&view=1up&seq=1

#stork #anthropology #egypt