The ancient and true name of this bird seems to be lost. The present one is fancifully given from observation of a circumstance of its oeconomy; translated, it signifies, Father John, and the reason is, that it appears on St John’s day, the precise time when first the fresh water of the tropical rains is known in Egypt to have mixed with the Nile, and to have made it lighter, sweeter, and more exhaleable in dew, that is in the beginning of the season of the tropical rains, when all water-fowl, that are birds of passage, resort to Ethiopia in great numbers.

As I have observed this bird has lost its name, so in the history of Egypt and Ethiopia we have lost a bird, once very remarkable, of which now nothing remains but the name, this is the Ibis, to which divine honours were paid, whose bodies were embalmed and preserved with the same care as those of men. There still remain many repositories full of them in Egypt, and appear everywhere in collections in the hands of the curious. Though the manner that these birds are prepared, and caustic ingredients, with which the body is injected, have greatly altered the consistency of their parts, and the colour of their plumage, yet it is from these, viewed and compared deliberately, and at leisure, that I am convinced the Abou Hannes is neither more nor less than the Ibis.

Several authors, treating of this bird, have involved it in more than Egyptian darkness. They have first said it was a stork, then the hÆmatopus, or red-legged heron; they then say its colour is of a fine shining black, its beak and legs of a deep red. Some have said it was from it that men learned the way to administer clysters, others, that it conceived at the beak, and even laid eggs that way, and that its flesh is sweet and red like that of a salmon. Ail these and many more are fables. We know from Plutarch, that in the plumage, it is black and white like the pelargus. And the mummy pits, by furnishing part of the bird itself, confirm us in the opinion.

The Abou Hannes has a beak shaped like that of a curlew, two-thirds of which is straight, and the remaining third crooked; the upper part of a green, horny substance, and the lower black. From the occiput to where it joins the beak is four inches and a half. Its leg, from the lower joint of the thigh to the foot, is six inches, the bone round and strong, according to the remark of Cicero, and from the lower joint of the thigh, to where it joins the body, is five inches and a half. The height of the body as it stands, from the sole of its foot to the middle of the back, is nineteen inches. The aperture of the eye is one inch. Its feet and legs are black; has three toes before, armed with sharp, straight claws: it has a toe also behind. Its head is brown, and the same colour reaches down to the back, or where the back joins with the neck. Its throat is white, so are its breast, back, and thighs. The largest feathers of its wings are a deep black for thirteen inches from the tail, and from the extremity of the tail, six inches up the back is black likewise.

Now the measures of the beak, the tibia, the thigh-bone, and the scull, compared with the most perfect of the embalmed birds taken from the mummy pits, do agree in every thing as exactly as can be expected. The length of the beak in my drawing seems to exceed that of the embalmed bird, but I will not be positive; this small error is not in the design, though the white feathers are scorched in the embalmed birds, yet there is no difficulty in perceiving the colour distinctly; there is less in distinguishing the black upon the wings and above its rump. The measure of both so exactly agree that they can scarcely be mistaken.

The reason, we are told, why this bird was held in such veneration in Egypt, was the great enmity it had to serpents, and the use of freeing the country from them; but for my own part, I must confess, that as I know, for certain, there are no quantity of serpents in Egypt, as the reason of things is that they should be few, so I can never make myself believe they ever were in such abundance, as to need any particular agent to distinguish itself by destroying them. Egypt Proper, that is the cultivated and inhabited part of it, is overflowed for five months every year by the Nile, and it is impossible vipers can abound where there is such long and regular refrigerations. The viper casts his skin in May, and is immediately after in his renewed youth and fulness of vigour. All this time he would be doomed in Egypt to live under water, or hid in some hole, and this is the time when the Ibis is in Egypt, so that the end of his coming would be frustrated by the absence of his enemy. The vipers have their abode in the sandy desert of Libya, where even dew does not fall, where the sand is continually in motion, parched with hot winds, and glowing with the scorching rays of the sun. There the Ibis could not live ; the country is not inhabited by man, and consequently vipers there would be no nuisance. Nay, we know these vipers of Libya are an article of commerce in Egypt. The Theriac is composed of them at Venice and at Rome, and they are dispersed for the uses of medicine throughout the different parts of the world.

Now, in this light, the Ibis could not live among them, nor would he be of benefit even if he could; but as we have it from a number of credible historians that the Ibis was plentiful in Egypt, that vipers, at least, in some part of it, were so frequent as to be a nuisance, and that we know as surely two other things, that neither the vipers are a nuisance, nor is the Ibis in Egypt at this day, we must look for some change in the oeconomy of the country which can account for this.

We know in a manner not to doubt, that in ancient times Egypt was inhabited, and extended to the edges of the Libyan Desert; nay, in some places, considerably into it; large lakes were dug in this country by their first kings, and these, filled in the time of the Nile’s inundation, continued immense reservoirs, which were let out by degrees to water the plantations and pleasure-ground that had been created by man, in what was formerly a desert. Nothing in fact was wanting but water, and these large lakes supplied this want abundantly, by furnishing water of the purest and most perfect kind: in the neighbourhood of these artificial plantations, there can be no doubt the viper must be a nuisance. Being indigenous in this his domicil, it is not probable he would quit it easily, and any deficiency of them in number would not have failed to be supplied from the deserts in the neighbourhood. The prodigious pools of stagnant water would bring the Ibis thither, and place him near his enemy, and after man had once discerned his use, gratitude would soon lead him to reward him.

But after, when these immense lakes, and the conduits leading to them, were neglected, and the works ruined which conducted these artificial inundations, and covered the deserts of Libya with verdure; when war and tyranny, and every sort of bad government, made people fly from the country, or live precariously and insecure in it, all this temporary paradise vanished: the land was overflowed no more; the sands of the desert resumed their ancient station; there were no inhabitants in the country, no pools of water for the Ibis, nor was the viper a nuisance. The Ibis retired to his native country Ethiopia, in the lower part of which, that is, in a hot country full of pools of stagnant water, he remains, and there I found him.

It is probable in Egypt he had increased greatly by the quantity of food and good entertainment he had. Upon these failing, he probably died and wore out of Egypt; and in the proportion in which he was at first created, which seems to have been a slender one, he remained in his native Ethiopia, for his emigration and increase in Egypt was merely accidental. This, I apprehend, is the true cause why the Ibis is now no longer known in Egypt; but I am satisfied to restore him to natural history, with at least a probable conjecture, why he is now unknown in those very regions where once he was worshipped as a god. His figure appears frequently upon the obelisks among the hieroglyphics, and further confirms my conjecture that this is the bird.

The Count de Buffon has published the bird, which he calls the white79 Ibis of Egypt, the half of his head crimson, with a strong beak of a gold colour, liker to that of a toucan, and long, purple, weak legs, and a thick neck; in short, having none of the characters of the bird it is intended to represent.

The reader may be assured there is no such Ibis in Egypt; none ever appeared from the catacombs but what were black and white, as historians have described80, so that this is so disguised by the drawing and colouring as not to be known, or else it came from some other country than Egypt.