Was Humpty Dumpty an egg?
No he wasn't an egg at all. There is a lot of speculation about what Humpty Dumpty is on this site. Now here is the real answer. Humpty Dumpty was a slang in the eighteenth-century for short clumsy person. Humpty Dumpty was also the name of a canon in the sixteenth-century English civil war. He was mounted on a wall and was knocked down by enemy canon fire to the wall he was perched on. The king ordered him put back on the wall using men and horses but they failed to do so because Humpty was to enormous and heavy resulting in the king having to surrender and losing the war. http://www.rhymes.org.uk/humpty_dumpty.htm Follow the link.
The idea that Humpty Dumpty was an egg originated with the artist John Tenniel's illustration of him in "Alice through the Looking Glass" in 1871. This set an image of Humpty in the public mind and he's been depicted as an egg ever since.
The original Humpty Dumpty was a CANNON (with 2 n's in the middle, lpljr - a CANON is a senior clergyman in the Church of England !) It was mounted on top of the St. Mary's at the Wall Church in Colchester defending the city against siege in the summer of 1648. (Although Colchester was a Parliamentarian stronghold, it was captured by the Royalists who held it for 11 weeks.) The church tower was hit by the enemy and the top of the tower was blown off, sending "Humpty" tumbling to the ground. Naturally "the King's men* tried to mend him but in vain. The "men" would have been infantry, and "horses" the cavalry troops.
lpljr is correct in saying that humpty dumpty was slang for someone short and clumsy, but apaprently before that it referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale.
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