The Roc is an enormous legendary bird of prey in the popular mythology of the Middle East. The word is not related to the English word rook. The idea of the roc had its origins in the story of the fight between the Indian solar bird Garuda and the chthonic serpent Nāga.
About Roc (mythology) in brief
The Roc is an enormous legendary bird of prey in the popular mythology of the Middle East. The word is not related to the English word rook. The idea of the roc had its origins in the story of the fight between the Indian solar bird Garuda and the chthonic serpent Nāga. The scientific culture of the 19th century introduced some rationalizations for the myth’s origins, by suggesting that the origin of the myth may lie in embellishments of the often-witnessed power of the eagle that could carry away a newborn lamb. There were reported elephant bird sightings at least as early as 1420, when an egg, live or subfossilised, was found in Cape Good Hope, New Zealand. Between 1830 and 1840 European travelers in Madagascar saw giant eggs and shells of the Aepyornis elephant bird, hunted to extinction by the 16th century, that was three meters tall and flightless.
In 1851 the French Academy of Sciences received three eggs that seemingly belonged to a roc, according to a caption on a map of the world, which says that roc “carries away any other great animal\ or any other animal”. They were later confirmed to be the eggs of the moa, which later died out in the 20th century. The egg shells were found to be those of a giant roc called the Hope of Good Hope. The story collection One Thousand and One Nights includes tales of Abd al-Rahman and Sinbad the Sailor, both of which include the Roc. The English form roc originates via Antoine Galland’s French from Arabic ruḵḵ and that from Persian rušh.
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This page is based on the article Roc (mythology) published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 28, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
