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mechanicalbirds.bsky.social
eden 🐋
@mechanicalbirds.bsky.social
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caxela.bsky.social
Young Dinornis at the Beach 🏖️
Two juvenile giant moa (Dinornis robustus) run energetically along a beach, creating some splashes as they go. Small waves roll in behind them.
August 9, 2025 at 4:30 PM
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alisonfisk.bsky.social
Artists have always loved to sketch!

Sketch of a sparrow from Egypt dated c. 1479–1458 BC.

Some 3,500 years ago in Egypt, artists used small flakes of limestone as sketchpads!

MMA excavations 1922-23, Deir el-Bahri. 📷 The Met www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

#FindsFriday
#Archaeology
Met Museum photo of an Ancient Egyptian artist’s painting of a swallow on a flake of limestone, dated to the New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, c. 1479-1458 BC. The sparrow stands in profile with head to the right. It is delicately painted with a pinkish body. The outline and details are highlighted in a reddish/brown pigment. It’s legs, eye, and beak are painted black. Limestone flake dimensions H. 6.6 cm x W. 10.6 cm. This may have been a practice drawing of the sparrow hieroglyph which was used for words meaning ‘small’, ‘poor’, or ‘bad’. Egyptian artisans who decorated tombs and temples made practice sketches on flakes of limestone which are known by egyptologists as ostraca (singular: ostracon). Sometimes the drawings were used as a template when transferring an image to the wall of a tomb or a temple. Limestone flakes were readily available for this purpose as by-products of the construction of temples and rock-cut tombs. A number of ostraca were recovered at Deir el-Bahri during the 1922-23 MMA excavations.
August 8, 2025 at 1:21 PM