I am going to contradict the other answer. Humpty Dumpty may not have been an egg at conception, but he was certainly one by 1835, thirty years before Lewis Carroll wrote *Alice in Wonderland*. There was a long poem published in 1835, *Child Capone's Nonage*, by A Monk, which you can find on [Google books](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Childe_Capone_s_Nonage_or_a_scheme_of_ed/snH4BNHpJWAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=humpty%20dumpty%20%22sat%20on%20a%20wall%22%20egg), which has a footnote which starts: > “Humpty-dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty-dumpty had a great fall: Not all the King's horses and all the King's men Could set Humpty-dumpty right agen.” > > This nursery rhyme upon an egg, which every body remembers, represents, under a beautiful allegory, the easy lapse of a child from his early position of virtue, and the vast difficulty of reclaiming him at school and college, even though these may have been founded and endowed by kings.