What makes us think that Humpty Dumpty is an egg?

Question

It doesn't actually say that anywhere in the rhyme?

Yes - I know all the pictures we see are of him as an egg. But why?

Answer 1

Ricky Gervais did a great sketch based around this, in which he imagines being a king wanting to start a battle and finding that all his soldiers have gone to fix an egg "Are you mental?! An egg?" He also asks why does it say all the king's horses couldn't put him back together? Of course horses can't mend eggs!

I read in a book on myths that have occurred over the years that the reason Humpty Dumpty is aassociated with being an egg is that he was featured as an illustration for the rhyme in one of the Alice in Wonderland books (it may be Through the looking glass). The rhyme is older than the book and it is thought that, originally, Humpty Dumpty might have referred to a cannon being perched on a wall.

Answer 2

Humpty Dumpty is a character in a Mother Goose rhyme, portrayed as an anthropomorphized egg. Most English-speaking children are familiar with the rhyme:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
That Humpty Dumpty is an egg is not actually stated in the rhyme. In its first printed form, in 1810, it is a riddle, and exploits for misdirection the fact that "humpty dumpty" was 18th-Century reduplicative slang for a short, clumsy person. Whereas a clumsy person falling off a wall would not be irreperably damaged, an egg would be. The rhyme is no longer posed as a riddle, since the answer is now so well known. Similar riddles have been recorded by folklorists in other languages, such as Boule Boule in French, or Thille Lille in Swedish; though none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English.

Answer 3

That Humpty Dumpty is an egg is not actually stated in the rhyme. In its first printed form, in 1810, it is a riddle, and exploits for misdirection the fact that "humpty dumpty" was 18th-Century reduplicative slang for a short, clumsy person. Whereas a clumsy person falling off a wall would not be irreperably damaged, an egg would be. The rhyme is no longer posed as a riddle, since the answer is now so well known. Similar riddles have been recorded by folklorists in other languages, such as Boule Boule in French, or Thille Lille in Swedish; though none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English.

Answer 4

What really makes us think that Humpty Dumpty is an egg is because at the end of the rhyme it says "All kings horses and all the kings' men couldn't put humpty back together again" When it says they couldn't humpty back together again is because you cant put an egg back to its original place after it cracks. Because an egg isn't an egg without the yolk inside. The only pieces they could put back together its the shell.

Answer 5

Humpty Dumpty was a rather "large" man, percieved as an egg by medieval artists.

Answer 6

Humpty dumpty was actually king James the 1st. He was very week and unable to sit on a horse without falling off. His men were constantly helping him. 'and all the kings men'

Answer 7

Humpty wasn/t an egg he was an egg plant, and when he fell off the wall they couldn't put him back togeather because the horse ate him!

Answer 8

Good point. I was conditioned by the pictures in my nursery rhyme books as a kid which all portrayed him as an egg-man! Maybe he's a bottle of vodka!!!

Answer 9

It is UNDERSTOOD that he is an egg. He falls off the wall and cracks, right? Just like an egg would. If it looks like an egg, acts like an egg, tastes like an egg. It must be an egg.

Answer 10

He is described as an egg in Alice Through the Looking-Glass:
http://www.sabian.org/Alice/lgchap06.htm