THE ANSWER TO YESTERDAY'S MIDWEEK MYSTERY QUESTION

As some of you guessed, yes ... it’s a bird.

Discovered during the 1898 excavation of the Pa-di-Imen tomb in Saqqara, Egypt, the Saqqara bird is a shaped artifact made from the wood of a sycamore tree.

So what was its purpose? Was it simply the toy of an affluent Egyptian child? Did it serve some kind of ceremonial purpose? Regardless, the object has few realistic bird traits. With its vertical tail, resembling that of an airplane or glider, it resembles no known bird.

Egyptian physician, archaeologist, parapsychologist and dowser Khalil Messiha has speculated that the ancient Egyptians developed the first aircraft. However, scientists have since come to the conclusion that it couldn’t be effective as an aircraft due to lack of technology, but it could have been a glider.