Pyramids and other amazing ancient Egyptian artifacts continue to attract archaeologists, but is it possible that the ancient Egyptians had aviation?
Wooden figure, III century. BC. was found in Saqqara, Egypt, in 1898. It was believed to be a bird and was placed with other bird figures in the Cairo Museum. When Dr. Khalil Messiha, physician and Egyptologist, saw her in 1969, he realized that she was very similar to the airplane model he made as a child.
John H. Lienhard, professor of engineering at the University of Houston explains: “Another bird has legs. This one does not. Other birds have feathers, this one does not. Other wooden birds have horizontal tail feathers like real birds … This strange model has a vertical tail. The wing has sections. From an aerodynamic point of view, everything is done correctly. Too many coincidences."
One bird has wings with feathers, the other has no feathers. The tail is also located differently. Is it just a mistake or deliberate clarification of details?
Some believe that the bird's vertical tail, which resembles the tail of an airplane, is simply stylized tail feathers. Such an element can be seen in the figures of birds that adorn ships on the relief of the Khonsu temple.
Messihi's brother, a flight mechanic by trade, made an enlarged copy, and it flew successfully, says Lienhard.
Lienhard notes that the 3rd millennium was a time of great inventions. He writes: “It took work on a large scale to get this close to the correct shape of the aircraft. This small wooden model could not have come into existence if someone had not been working to create large models, perhaps even capable of transporting a person."
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Planner Martin Gregory tried to replicate Brother Messihi's experiment, but failed. Without a tail stabilizer, which the bird never had, it is completely unstable, he said.
And even with the stabilizer attached, it turned out to be of little use for planning. He doesn't think this is a glider model. Gregory suggested that the bird was used as a weather vane or a child's toy.
It is still unclear if the Sakkar bird was an attempt to build a real flying machine.