Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 139, July 2016, pp. 1-23. | Page 14

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me clear authorization (21). But the hoopoe stayed not long and said, ―I have
encompassed [in knowledge] that which you have not encompassed, and I have
come to you from Sheba with certain news (22).‖ Islamic literature also states that
a hoopoe saved Moses and the children of Israel from being crushed by the giant
Og after crossing the Red Sea (Wikipedia).
Hoopoes were seen as a symbol of virtue in Persia. A hoopoe was a leader of the
birds in the Persian book of poems The Conference of the Birds ("Mantiq al-Tayr"
by Attar) and when the birds seek a king, the hoopoe points out that the
"Simurgh" was the king of the birds (Wikipedia).
Hoopoes were thought of as thieves across much of Europe, and harbingers of
war in Scandinavia. In Estonian tradition, hoopoes are strongly connected with
death and the underworld; their song is believed to foreshadow death for many
people or cattle (Wikipedia).

Hoopoe. Sharjah Stamp. Date of Issue: 20.02.1965.
http://www.birdtheme.org/mainlyimages/index.php?code=260
The hoopoe is the king of the birds in the Ancient Greek comedy The
Birds by Aristophanes. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, book 6, King Tereus of
Thracerapes Philomela, his wife Procne's sister, and cuts out her tongue. In
revenge, Procne kills their son Itys and serves him as a stew to his father. When
Tereus sees the boy's head, which is served on a platter, he grabs a sword but just
as he attempts to kill the sisters, they are turned into birds—Procne into a
swallow and Philomela into a nightingale. Tereus himself is turned into
an epops (6.674), translated as lapwing by Dryden and lappewincke (lappewinge)
by John Gower in his Confessio Amantis, or hoopoe in A.S. Kline's translation. The
Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin – Number 139 – July 2016