The lanner falcon is a medium-sized bird of prey that breeds in Africa, southeast Europe and just into Asia. It prefers open habitat and is mainly resident, but some birds disperse more widely after the breeding season. A large falcon, it preys on birds and bats. Most likely either the lanner or peregrine falcon was the sacred species of falcon to the ancient Egyptians, and some ancient Egyptian deities, like Ra and Horus, were often represented as a man with the head of a lanner falcon.
Lanner falcon
South Africa
Eggs, Collection Museum Wiesbaden
Lanner falcon at Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, South Africa
Ra or Re was the ancient Egyptian deity of the Sun. By the Fifth Dynasty, in the 25th and 24th centuries BC, he had become one of the most important gods in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the noon-day sun. Ra ruled in all parts of the created world: the sky, the Earth, and the underworld. He was believed to have ruled as the first pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. He was the god of the sun, order, kings and the sky.
Ra on the solar barque on his daily voyage across the sky (𓇯), adorned with the sun-disk
Jewelry of Ra as a falcon with spread wings, adorned with the sun-disk and holding the ankh, the hieroglyphic symbol of life
Inlay depicting the squatting Ra with the sun-disk placed atop his falcon head
Ra in his ram-headed form traveling through the underworld in his solar barque on the subterrestrial Nile, from the copy of the Book of Gates in the tomb of Ramses I (KV16)