Biblical Bestiary: Owl

© RMN-GRAND PALAIS / ART RESOURCE, NY

There are more than 200 species of owls living across all continents except Antarctica, from hot and dry deserts to the freezing snow-covered plains of the Arctic. They are split between two taxonomic families: Strigidae (typical owls) and Tytonidae (barn owls). Owls are easily identified by their round face, hooked bill, and large, forward-facing eyes that require the head to rotate in order to look in different directions. Mostly nocturnal, these predators have the best night vision of any animal, and their hearing is exceptional, too. Owls feed on insects, fish, and small rodents; larger species are known to carry off even larger mammals.

Across cultures, owls have been understood in very different ways, either as warning signs of doom or as symbols of wisdom. They first appeared in the art of Egypt and the ancient Near East in the late fourth millennium BCE. There are no known owl-deities in the Egyptian pantheon, but owls figure prominently in funerary contexts and were symbols of sickness and death. From tombs come mummified owls (often decapitated prior to burial) and owl-shaped amulets. Some even argue that the bird representing ba (the dead person’s “soul,” which was able to travel out from the tomb and return at night) is an owl.

Owls figure in Mesopotamian city laments as wildlife that would come to inhabit ruined, desolated cities. Similar associations of owls with ruin and desolation appear in the Bible, where owls are predicted to replace humans in decimated Nineveh (Zephaniah 2:13–14) and across the entire territory of Edom (Isaiah 34:11–13). Together with other birds of prey, various types of owls were considered impure and therefore not to be eaten (Leviticus 11:17–18).

In classical Greece, on the other hand, owls were considered good omens. Most famously, the owl was sacred to the goddess Athena, whose sanctuary on the Athenian acropolis allegedly was full of owls. With Athena, the owl featured on the reverse of Attic silver coins; and like the goddess, the owl represented knowledge, wisdom, and insight, even serving as a symbol of the Athenian city-state (hence, probably, the saying “bringing owls to Athens”). In popular imagination, however, the owl’s haunting hoots and scary screeches never ceased to evoke the night bird’s less favorable connotations.

The terracotta aryballos flask pictured above comes from Corinth, Greece. It was made from a mold in the form of an owl and then painted in an eastern style, around 640 BCE. Likely used to hold perfumed oil, the miniature flask is only 2 inches tall.