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Is it a plane or a bird?

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Lovelee
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« on: May 26, 2009, 10:06:09 am »

In room 22 of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt, there is a wooden object that appears very similar to a modern airplane or glider. In fact, it is so similar that some have offered it as proof that the ancient Egyptians possessed the technology of flight. The artifact (Special Register No. 6347; the number 33109 is written on the bottom of the port wing) is made of wood and has a length of 5.6 inches (14.2 cm) and a wingspan of 7.2 inches (18.3 cm). It was found in a tomb near Saqqara in 1898 and has been dated to about 200 B.C.






The seed of the theory that the model represents an example of a working aircraft can be traced to Khalil Messiha, Professor of Anatomy for the Artists at Helwan University (and member of the Royal Aeromodellars Club, Egypt, and the Egyptian Aeronautical club). According to Messiha, (in Messiha, Khalil, Guirguis Messiha, Gamal Mokhtar, and Michael Frenchman. "African Experimental Aeronautics: A 2,000-Year-Old Model Glider" in Van Sertima, ed. Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern, 1983, pp.92-99) the model is made of sycamore wood and weighs 39.120 gms. Of the wings he wrote, "One can note also that there is a Dihedral angle which is slightly unequal on both sides due to slight distortion of the wood, caused by the passage of time... The body is made of the same wood as the wing and has an aerofoil shape beautifully carved and smooth. Its nose is pyramidal in shape with one eye painted on its right surface." He added that "there is no trace of any decoration of 'feathers' painted on the body with the exception of the eye, and two faint reddish lines surrounding the belly under the grooves." He makes no mention of any holes on the top of the tail, nor did he observe grooves on the tail that might accommodate a tailplane. Everything about this Messiha's physical observation of the model appears to be accurate. He did add, however, "The lower part of the tail is broken [i.e. flat] which I think may be an evidence that the tail was attached there." It is notable that by close examination of the photographs, a flattening on top of the tail is also evident. He places great weight on the lack of feather decoration and the absence of legs as an indication that the model was not meant to represent a bird. The other bird models include these features, he insists. Of the model's flightworthiness, he wrote, "I have already made a similar balsa wood model, and added the tailplane (which I suppose was lost) and was not astonished to find that it could sail in the air for a few yards when thrown by hand." (p. 94) Messiha concluded that "This ancient aeroplane model represents a diminutive of an original monoplane still present in Saqqara."

http://www.catchpenny.org/model.html

AND THEN THERE IS THIS ONE - MORE INFO AND PICS ON THE LINK



MORE PICS AT http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_aviones_precolom02.htm

The structures just in front of the tail are strongly reminiscent of elevons (a combination of ailerons and elevators) with a slight forward curve, but they are attached to the fuselage, rather than the wings. In any case, they look more like airplane parts than like the claspers of a fish. If the two prominent spirals on the wings are supposed to be a stylized version of the eyes of a ray, then what are the two globular objects positioned on the head supposed to represent?

 

To complicate the identification even more, the spirals on the wings have their copies positioned on the nose of the object, in the opposite direction. When the object is viewed in profile, the did similarity to anything from the animal kingdom is even more pronounced. If the zoomorphic explanation is supposed to hold, then why did the artist cut the head off almost three quarters from the body? And why is the nose is practically rectangular and the cut tilted forward, with eyes positioned at either side, when fish eyes are usually more near the center of bodyline and far forward on the head?

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