Religious narrative · Animals
Birds ate from the basket on my head
Egypt (narrative setting) · undated narrative
I also was in my dream, and, behold, I had three white baskets on my head: And in the uppermost basket there was of all manner of bakemeats for Pharaoh; and the birds did eat them out of the basket upon my head.
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- Source
- The Bible, King James Version — Various, 1611. Genesis 40:16–17
- Record type
- Religious narrative
- Place
- Egypt (narrative setting) · Hebrew Bible, Egyptian
- Date
- undated narrative
- Uncertainty
- High — Religious narrative; not a historical dream report.
- Imagery
- Bird · Food · Ruler
- Feelings
- Unease
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Animals in dreams often speak, change form or carry strong feeling. Ellis suggested such dreams may lie behind fables of talking animals; later writers read them as instinct given a face.
Ellis (1911), note 262
Mythological
Messenger animals are everywhere in myth: the eagle in Penelope’s dream, Pharaoh’s seven cows, guardian dogs at the gates of the dead.
Odyssey XIX; Genesis 41
Chinese traditions
In the Liezi’s “deer under banana leaves”, a hunted deer becomes a puzzle about where dreaming ends; Zhuangzi’s butterfly turns the question inside out.
Liezi; Zhuangzi
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- Three black dogs howling Wu (Suzhou), China · c. 475 BCE (as told)
- Three horses at one trough Luoyang (setting) · novel (printed 1522); set 220
- Seven lean cows Egypt (narrative setting) · undated (text c. 6th c. BCE)
- A parrot with both wings broken Luoyang, China · c. 698 (as told)
- Seven thin ears devoured the full Egypt (narrative setting) · undated narrative
- No proper dog at all Scottish moorland (dreamed) · before 1888