 The rhyme does not explicitly state that the subject is an egg , possibly because it may have been originally posed as a riddle . There are also various theories of an original " Humpty Dumpty " . One , advanced by Katherine <unk> Thomas in 1930 and adopted by Robert Ripley , posits that Humpty Dumpty is King Richard III of England , depicted as <unk> in Tudor histories and particularly in Shakespeare 's play , and who was defeated , despite his armies , at Bosworth Field in <unk> . 
