Hieroglyph owl

It means M.

And M means of ton of things.

Here, let me look in a dictionary and see what it says.

Its assigned number is G17.

G for birds, the 17th bird.

It means: through, together with, via, it, on, at, by, with, by means of, from, out of, as, namely, when, do not, take!

So then, pretty much any preposition you like, plus a couple imperatives.

And that's what makes it so doggone tricky to translate. You have to really intuit what they mean. And sometimes the potential meanings are opposites.

Plus the symbol is used endlessly in combinations with other symbols. Usually for the phoneme M. Like sign language. You see:then you think, "M," you see this owl, you think, "M."

I made a pop-up card of an Egyptian owl that left me very very diesel pointed because I was not filled with grace, nor did I draw graceful lines. I missed the key and forfeited the wisdom. 

The card sucked.

But I mailed it anyway. 

I think my brother has it. But I forget whom I inflicted it upon. They're probably thinking, "Why did he send me this piece of crap? It's not even attractive." 

It makes me want to do it again. 

I can think of a million ways. Possibly five ways. 

* Sitting on a top branch of a tree with a bird's eye view of people down there drawn on the background.

* Flying straight at you. 

* Flying as if landing and holding something like a snake or a rat.

* Sitting on top of an obelisk with hieroglyphs foreshortened on all four sides drawn on the background, and with the tops of heads and shoulders and legs of workers way down on the bottom. 

* Sitting upright tucked into branches just looking at you. As they do.

* Sitting upright with wings spread.

* Create a bunch of little owls having a party.

Before I taught myself how to do pop-up mechanisms, I did them all wrongly. I just tried to figure out how to get one side of the card to use the force of opening it to affect the other side of the card. So each thing was attached with an arm to the opposite side. The arm could be incorporated into the content. I made all kinds of weird stupid things entirely the wrong ways. One was a bunch of bugs playing instruments. Stupid instruments. A jazz band. A bug jazz band. The person who received the card loved it because it was so stupid. You open a handmade card and there is all this incredibly stupid crap in it. Bugs sitting on leaves playing banjo, washboard, trumpet and drums. That expand out of a card and then tuck back in again when it's closed. That's the real trick, getting them to close. 

I wracked my brain trying to figure it out. 

Turns out the real ways to do it are all well established and they're a million times better. Possibly five times better. 

At any rate, here's the owl card. A prototype really, but it was mailed anyway. My next one will be a lot better.

It looks like a parrot.

The hieroglyphs say "happy birthday" and the year.

See that hieroglyph 6th down on the left half? It's a woman giving birth. The 4 under it means "day."