People Left Shocked After Realizing Humpty Dumpty Is Not An Egg After All

Unlike what many of us have believed since childhood, the popular character from the nursery rhyme that reads, “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” is not an egg.

It is hardly unfounded that anyone would assume Humpty Dumpty to be an egg since many pictures depict him as such, and the story ends with him falling off a wall and cracking. Several movies, including Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland sequel, have shown Humpty as an anthropomorphic egg with eyes, a nose, and a mouth.

Is Humpty Dumpty an egg?

It all started when author Holly Bourne expressed their curiosity on X, formerly Twitter, last year. “Who decided Humpty Dumpty was an egg? It’s not in the lyrics, and deciding he’s a giant egg is quite a random leap for someone to make, and everyone else being like, ‘yeah, a giant egg on a wall. Of course,’” she posted.

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Soon enough, other users began to ask the same question, including those who had nursed the thought previously. “This has been haunting me for years,” someone replied. “This has bugged me for a long time!!” another added. Some commenters who never considered the impossibility of the character from the British-originated rhyme being anything other than an egg also expressed their shock. “Oh my goodness, how did I not realize this?” a user asked.

What is Humpty Dumpty?

Vice Chair of the Federation of Children’s Book Groups, Jane Etheridge, shared her thoughts on Humpty Dumpty’s identity. “It’s believed to be Roundhead propaganda about a Royalist cannon. First appearance as an egg was in ‘Through the Looking Glass,’” she explained.

Some theories say that the Humpty Dumpty rhyme tells the story of King Richard III’s defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. Several speculations also confirm that Humpty may be a representation of something more sinister and anything but a harmless egg. “This is genuinely the first time I’ve realized he’s not explicitly an egg,” someone quipped on social media.