Essay on the Theory of the Earth

by baron Georges Cuvier

And yet this latter character was essential to the ibis. Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride) says, that the manner in which the white was cut by the black in the plumage of this bird, presented the form of a lunar crescent. It is, in fact, by the union of the black of the last quills, with that of the two ends of the wings, that there is formed, in the white, a large semicircular notch, which gives to the white the figure of a crescent.

It is more difficult to explain what he has intended to say, in averring that the feet of the ibis form an equilateral triangle with its beak. But we can understand the assertion of Ælian, that when it draws in its head and neck among its feathers, it represents, in some measure, the figure of a heart.[356] It was on account of this, according to Horus Apollo (c. 35.), the emblem of the human heart.

From what Herodotus says of the nakedness of the throat, and of the feathers which covered the upper part of the neck, he appears to have had under his eyes a middle aged individual; but it is not the less certain, that the Egyptians also knew very well the individuals with the neck entirely bare. We see such represented from sculptures in bronze, in Caylus’s Collection of Egyptian Antiquities (vol. i. pl. x. no. 4., and vol. v. pl. xi. no. 1.) This last figure is even so like our bird represented in pl. v., that it might be said that it was taken from it.

The paintings of Herculaneum no longer leave any doubt on the subject. Plates 138 and 140 of David’s edition, and vol. ii. p. 315, pl. 59, and p. 321, pl. 60 of the original edition, which represent Egyptian ceremonies, shew several ibises walking in the court of the temples. The characteristic blackness of the head and neck are in particular recognised, and it is easily seen from the proportion which their figure bears to the persons in the painting, that it must have been a bird of half a metre at the most, and not of a metre, or thereabouts, like the Tantalus ibis.

The mosaic of Palestine, also presents in its middle part several ibises perched upon buildings. They differ in nothing from those of the paintings of Herculaneum. A Sardonyx of Dr Mead’s Collection, copied by Shaw, App. pl. v., and representing an ibis, seems to be a miniature of the bird which we have described. A medal of Adrian, in large bronze, represented in the Farnesian Museum, vol. vi. pl. xxviii. fig. 16, and another of the same emperor, in silver, represented in vol. iii. pl. vi. fig. 9, afford figures of the ibis, which, notwithstanding their smallness, are pretty like our bird.

With regard to the figures of the ibis, sculptured upon the plinth of the statue of the Nile, at Belvedere, and upon the copy of it at the garden of the Tuileries, they are not sufficiently finished to serve as proofs; but among the hieroglyphics of which the Institute of Egypt has caused impressions to be made upon the spot, there are several which distinctly represent our bird. In [plate iii]. fig. 1, we give one of these impressions which M. Geoffroy has had the politeness to communicate to us.

We insist particularly on this latter figure, because it is the most authentic of all, having been made at the time, and on the spot where the ibis was worshipped, and being cotemporary with its mummies; while those which we have cited above, having been made in Italy, and by artists who did not profess the Egyptian worship, might have been less faithful.

We owe to Bruce the justice of saying, that he recognised the bird which he describes under the name of Abou-Hannes, as the true ibis. He says expressly, that this bird appeared to him to resemble that which the mummy pitchers contained; and further, that this Abou-Hannes, or Father John, is very common on the banks of the Nile, while he never saw there the bird represented by Buffon, under the name of the White Ibis of Egypt.

M. Savigny, one of the naturalists of the expedition to Egypt, equally asserts his not having seen the Tantalus in that country, but he obtained a great number of our Numenius near the Lake Menzale, in Lower Egypt, and carried their skins with him.

The Abou-Hannes has been placed by Latham, in his Index Ornithologicus, under the name of Tantalus Æthiopicus; but he does not speak of Bruce’s conjecture respecting its identity with the ibis. The travellers before and after Bruce appear to have all been in error. Belon thought that the white ibis was the stork, in which he evidently contradicted all testimony on that head. No person has adopted his opinion in this matter, excepting the apothecaries, who have taken the stork for an emblem, because they have confounded it with the ibis, to which the invention of clysters is attributed[357].