Frog symbolism
In Egypt the frog goddess Heqet stood for birth, and frog-headed gods took part in the creation of the world; in Exodus frogs are the second plague on Egypt. In English folklore croaking frogs foretold rain, and in the Grimms' fairy tale a frog is a prince under a spell.
Meaning
Frogs mean new life in Egyptian religion and a plague in the Bible. E. A. Wallis Budge wrote that the Egyptians worshipped the frog as a symbol of birth and fertility, and that frog-headed gods helped create the world. In Exodus God fills Egypt with frogs, and in the Book of Revelation unclean spirits come out of the dragon's mouth as frogs. English folklore read frogs as signs of rain and of money, the Cherokee explained eclipses by a great frog swallowing the sun, and European fables and fairy tales made the frog a foolish subject or an enchanted prince.
Origin and history
In Egypt, according to Budge, the frog “appears to have been worshipped in primitive times as the symbol of generation, birth, and fertility in general”. The frog goddess Heqet was identified with Hathor and was the consort of the god Khnum (Budge's Khnemu). The four primeval gods Heh, Kek, Nau and Amen were shown with frogs' heads and their consorts with serpents' heads, and Budge counted the cult of the frog among the oldest in Egypt.
In the Bible the frog is a plague. In Exodus 8 God warns Pharaoh, “I mean to plague thy whole country with frogs”; Aaron stretches his hand over the waters, and frogs fill the land, until at Moses's prayer they die and are piled in stinking heaps. In the Book of Revelation (16:13) three unclean spirits appear “in the form of frogs” from the mouths of the dragon, the beast and the false prophet.
Frogs as omens
Meeting a frog could mean money. John Brand quotes the book Dives and Pauper (1493), which complains that some people would rather meet a frog on the road than a knight or a priest, “for than they say and leve that they shal have gold”. The author answered that the ditchers and labourers who meet the most frogs are the poorest of all. Frogs were also weather signs: Willsford's Nature's Secrets (1658), quoted by Brand, says that frogs croaking more than usual “does denote rainy weather.”
The frog that swallows the sun
In Cherokee belief, as James Mooney recorded it between 1887 and 1890, an eclipse of the sun happens when a great frog tries to swallow it, and people used to fire guns and make loud noises to frighten the frog away. Mooney also found that handling a green frog was thought to cause warts, and that ball players in training would not eat frog, for fear its brittle bones would make theirs brittle.
Frogs in fables and fairy tales
In the Aesop fable of the frogs who asked Jupiter for a king, the god first sends them a log, which they come to despise, and then a stork, which eats them. In the Grimms' tale of the Frog-Prince, in Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes's translation, a frog fetches a princess's golden ball from a spring in return for her promise to let him live with her, eat from her plate and sleep on her bed, and after three nights she wakes to find “instead of the frog, a handsome prince”, who had been “changed into a frog” by a spiteful fairy.
Related animals
The Snake symbolism shares the frog's place in Egyptian creation myth, as the consort of the frog-headed gods. The hare and frog are both omens on the road in English folklore.
See also
Dragonfly symbolism, Snake symbolism, Butterfly symbolism, Moth symbolism, Ladybug symbolism, Bee symbolism.
Sources
- The Gods of the Egyptians, Volume II, E. A. Wallis Budge, 1904, Methuen, London (Internet Archive), vol. II, pp. 378–379, the Frog
- Exodus, chapter 8, The Holy Bible, Knox translation, via New Advent, verses 1–14
- Apocalypse (Revelation), chapter 16, The Holy Bible, Knox translation, via New Advent, verse 13
- Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (John Brand, ed. Henry Ellis, 1853), John Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, arranged and revised by Sir Henry Ellis, vol. 3 (London: Bohn, 1853), Internet Archive (University of Toronto copy), Hare, Wolf, or Sow, crossing the Way, pp. 204–205
- Myths of the Cherokee (James Mooney, 1900), James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, part 1, Project Gutenberg, I. Introduction; 59. The smaller reptiles, fishes, and insects
- Aesop's Fables, a new translation (V. S. Vernon Jones, 1912), Aesop's Fables, trans. V. S. Vernon Jones (London: Heinemann, 1912), Project Gutenberg, The Frogs asking for a King
- Grimms' Fairy Tales (Taylor and Edwardes translation), Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, trans. Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes, The Frog-Prince, Project Gutenberg, The Frog-Prince
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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research