Hawk symbolism
In ancient Egypt the falcon of Horus, god of the sky and of kingship, which older English books call a hawk. In Homer a hawk is Apollo’s messenger and a sign from the gods; in Cherokee stories the Hawk plays for the birds beside the great mythic hawk, the Tla’nuwa.
Meaning
A good deal of what is written as hawk symbolism is about falcons. Adolf Erman’s Handbook of Egyptian Religion, in its 1907 English translation, speaks of “Horus as a hawk” and of the sun god with “the head of a sparrow-hawk”; Harvard Art Museums, describing a bronze Horus, calls the same bird a falcon. In Greek poetry the hawk is an omen and a figure of force: Homer makes it Apollo’s messenger, and Hesiod’s hawk tells the nightingale in its talons that only a fool fights the stronger. The meanings given online for seeing a hawk could not be traced to any of these traditions or to an older writer, and this page leaves them out.
Origin and history
Horus is “among Egypt’s oldest deities”, Harvard Art Museums says: lord of the sky, a sun god and god of kingship, shown “as a falcon or falcon-headed man”. The falcon’s eyes were the sun and the moon (see the eye of Horus). The living king was an earthly Horus, and from about 3100 BCE each king had a royal “Horus name”. Erman writes that “the Egyptians of the earliest times frequently conceived of their gods in animal form”: “the sky as a cow, the sun as a sparrow-hawk, the moon as an ibis”, and describes live sparrow-hawks kept in the sanctuary of the sun god, where “they sat on perches and peacefully pecked their food out of bowls”.
The hawk as an omen in Greek poetry
In the fifteenth book of the Odyssey, in Samuel Butler’s translation, “a bird flew by upon his right hand—a hawk, Apollo’s messenger. It held a dove in its talons”. Theoclymenus reads it for Telemachus: “it means that you will remain powerful and that there will be no house in Ithaca more royal than your own.” Hesiod’s Works and Days has the hawk as the voice of power: carrying a nightingale “high up among the clouds, gripped fast in his talons”, it tells her that “he is a fool who tries to withstand the stronger”.
The hawk in Cherokee stories
James Mooney, collecting among the Cherokee between 1887 and 1890, found “very little concerning hawks, excepting as regards the great mythic hawk, the Tla’nuwa’”. In the story of the ball game between the birds and the animals, “the birds had the Eagle for their captain, with the Hawk and the great Tla’nuwa, all swift and strong of flight”.
The hawk’s cry in films
The scream most people think of as an eagle’s is usually a hawk’s. The Missouri Department of Conservation explains that eagles have a softer, higher call, “so Hollywood editors tend to choose the stronger call of the Red-tailed hawk” for eagles on screen.
Related birds
The Raven symbolism is the other bird Greek writers gave to Apollo, and the Blue jay symbolism is known for copying hawk calls.
See also
Eye of Horus, Raven symbolism, Blue jay symbolism, Cardinal symbolism, Hummingbird symbolism, Owl symbolism.
Sources
- A Handbook of Egyptian Religion, Adolf Erman, translated by A. S. Griffith, 1907, Archibald Constable, London (Internet Archive), pp. 10, 26, 30, 234
- Horus Falcon Wearing Crown of Upper and Lower Egypt with Uraeus (Harvard Art Museums), Harvard Art Museums, object 1943.1118, Late Period Egypt, Harvard Art Museums
- The Odyssey (Samuel Butler translation), Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Samuel Butler (1900), Book XVII, Project Gutenberg, Book XV
- Works and Days (Hesiod, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White), Hesiod, Works and Days, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Project Gutenberg, Works and Days, ll. 202-211
- Hollywood’s Voice of Choice (Missouri Department of Conservation), Missouri Department of Conservation, Discover Nature Notes blog, Missouri Department of Conservation
- 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, Introduction; notes on bird lore; myth 36, The Ball Game of the Birds and Animals
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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research