#queenburd

I love this question because birds are great and ancient Egyptian birds are even greater. Hoopoe? Yes, thank you, I’ll have five.

Birds in a tree, Tomb of Khnumhotep III, Beni Hasan

Ancient Egypt had a super rich avian fauna - as anyone who ever cast a look at the extended library of bird signs in hieroglyphs can attest. We know of at least seventy species of birds from tomb paintings and other images, and even more thanks to osteological remains. The Nile valley and especially the swampy areas of the Delta were an absolute paradise for many birds. So with such an overabundance of avian species, it makes a lot of sense for the Egyptian pantheon to have as many birds as it does, and for them to be of importance in the mythology. Though with that having been said, the first and foremost role birds had was as food. Fowlers and bird catchers aplenty, many people in all social classes kept geese for eggs, and the elite loved hunting ducks for sport.

Nebamun hunting in the marshes, Tomb of Nebamun, Thebes

Now ancient Egyptians for most of their history didn’t really work with omens, so birds weren’t really considered omens of good or bad luck (exceptions apply once the Romans enter the scene). Sparrows were, as you say, considered pests and in that sense connected to the god Seth, but I don’t believe we have any evidence of an ancient Egyptian going “oh shit a lot of sparrows, get out the priests to stave off whatever evil they’re boding”. They probably just went, “look at those little agents of chaos, ugh”, and called their neighbour a sparrow-head when they were being a dick. 

As for how their connection to the religion reflected on their treatment, I’ve copied a part from the entry on birds in Redford’s Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt: 

Many birds played a role in Egyptian religious beliefs and practices. Several raptorial (predatory) species, however, were prominent. The most notable and frequently illustrated, especially as a hieroglyph, was the distinctive falcon belonging to Horus, the powerful god of the sky, who was closely connected with kingship; if the ancient Egyptians had a national bird, this would have been it. The Horus falcon, though, was regularly used as the emblem for other deities, such as Montu and Re-Horakhty; it was principally modeled after the Lanner falcon (Falco biarmicus) and the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus). The griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus) and the huge lappet-faced vulture (Torgos tracheliotus) were abundantly figured too and were linked to the Upper Egyptian goddess Nekhbet, who protected the king. The two sister goddesses, Isis and Nephthys, had associations with both the kestrel (Falco naumanni and Falco tinnunculus) and the black kite (Milvus migrans), in their capacity as divine mourners for the dead. The barn owl (Tyto alba) appeared as a standard hieroglyphic sign, but only rarely appeared in art and seems to have played a minor part in religion. Precisely the same holds true for the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus). Among waterside birds, there was also the special relationship between the sacred ibis and the god Thoth, lord of the moon and patron of the art of writing. The god Amun, chief deity of the city of Thebes, chose as one of his manifestations the Egyptian goose. The gray heron, or bnw-bird, symbolised the god Atum when he emerged from the waters of chaos and first revealed himself on the primeval eart. As a solar creature, the Benu-bird was identified with Re, the sun god, at the rising sun, and with Osiris, god of the West, at sunset. Sacred pelicans were maintained by priests in the Solar Temple of Any at Abu Ghurob, having mythological associations with the sun cult. During the late dynastic and Ptolemaic periods, the ancient Egyptians bred and mummified millions of birds, primarily the sacred ibis and certain smaller falcons, which were then used as votice offerings at religious centers, especially at the sites of Saqqara and Tuna el-Gebel, in what was a phenomenon unique to that age: the birds were eventually interred in vast cemetaries situated near the temples. It was believed that such prepared animals were capable of transmitting the prayers of the pious peilgrims who purchased them and who wished to petition the gods.

Birds were treated roughly similar to any other animal in ancient Egyptian that was connected to the cult of a specific deity. That is to say, they had symbolic values attached to them when it came to religion, and certain individual animals could be considered a manifestation of that god on earth, but in the real world the species as a whole would not have been treated like “holy” animals the same way other cultures do/have done. At least throughout most of Pharaonic Egypt - it gets a little iffy when the Greco-Roman Period comes around, because then we have a cultural shift from “Egypt” to “actually Greece, but like, Egypt-flavoured”. 

why. are people. like this. well anyway now I don’t like the word so much so maybe I’ll use some of the cool other suggestions given to me including but not limited to:

Koschei (Russian folklore egg thing???)

soulward (love this one bc it makes me think of squidward)

reliquary, Talisman, Trinket, Periapt, Idol, Keystone, Charm, symbol, emblem, insignia, Lure-

and my personal favourite;

bitchinabox

--

OH NEW UPDATE apparently Koschei is a dude!

so hey that’s a thing to know, maybe we can call it after him? like a Koschei-object. Koscheiegg. Koscheithing? 

[well now you’ve gone and made me feel poetic @queenburd ]

Though Shalt Not.

Oh Crowley had heard it many times. For the longest while, before the beginning, it’d been nothing but Though Shalt Not’s. Shalt not question Her authority. Shalt not attempt to understand ineffability. Shalt not this, shalt not that, and so on.

Until one day it all culminated into Though Shalt Not Return.

Following the whole corporate restructuring, Crowley had grown to see the words as more of a challenge than anything. Like a child told not to play with a toy that wasn’t theirs, or warned not to stick a fork into an electrical socket. It was a nasty way of coping, but Crowley had become rather good at being nasty, and getting better at it every century.

Especially when the big sods upstairs chopped out the meat of it into ten easy steps. It was like they’d constructed the perfect opposite end of a Venn Diagram, with all the seven sins in the other one, and seeing where they all met in the juicy, raw middle. With enough hard work and sweat and tears and venom, Crowley practically made both circles into one. At least when see from a proper angle [from the other angle, it looked more like Dante’s perspective].

Except for the second one. That bullet point always seemed to elude him.

Worshiping dieties always seemed so redundant by the time the Red Sea parted. God was one thing, but Crowley knew damned well that other religions thrived long before Her. Bless it all, he’d met quite a few of them in the stars before the whole falling mess, smiling benignly over China and India and the Americas, long before the molten rock solidified into greenery and time. All full of promises, the lot of them. Empty ones. Just like Her.

What was wrong with worshiping somebody else? It wasn’t like the results were any different.

So, rather than spread that bit around, he pocketed it. Kept it close. Momentarily peaked at it every time a pair of blue eyes crinkled at him. Saw it in the reflections of dinner plates and wine glasses. Heard it’s prayer with every awkward, peeling laughter shared with furled wings and strange understandings.

It didn’t dawn unto Crowley, until several years after the End That Never Ended At All Really, That he quite liked saving that little rule for himself to break. And break it he did.

“You shall’nt make f’y’self a carved image,” Crowley drawled against satin pajamas, face practically melding with the warm fibers, swirling the sweet and acrid culprit of his oncoming [allbeit preventable] hangover in his left hand, bottle dangling over the edge of the couch. His voice was haggard, hoarse, warm, and dreadfully too Honest. “Or ‘ny likeness of ‘nything that is in heav’n above..... or that‘s ‘n the earth, or that‘s ‘n the water...”

“You shall not bow down to them nor serve them,” a light, equally exhausted, equally honest, though far more sober voice provided, not too far from above where Crowley’s head was trying to burrow.

“Sumthin’ like that,” Crowley groaned, dropping the bottle to wrap his arms around the body that held the voice. Caressing the temple that held the very soul he was breaking the second commandment with.

Aziraphale chuckled. A vocal equivalent of a fond, disdainful eyeroll. Crowley took great pride in swallowing that chuckle with a sloppy, unpracticed kiss. But that was hardly Crowley’s fault, for while Hell housed all the musicians, Heaven had the choreographers, and Aziraphale knew every step to this dance of theirs.

“For I,” the words sang in the back of Aziraphale’s mind, forgotten as he held the wrongfully deviled temple of the serpent in his own arms, the both of them a messy tangle of quilts and pajamas [though not for long] on the couch, “The Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.”

Crowley would never say it to [his] angel’s face, but in spite of everything, he couldn’t help but notice Aziraphale, too, was like god. They both lied. They both coveted creatures that didn’t deserve it. And worst of all, they were both too blessedly warm for their own good.