01/3Egg remains intact for 1000 years
Eggs are so fragile that we often handle them with utmost care, but this 1000 year old chicken egg found unharmed and intact in a sewage disposal tank in Israel will leave you surprised!
A team of archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) found this 1000 year old egg in human faeces, during an excavation in the town of Yavne, which was undertaken before a new neighbourhood development.
02/3The discovery
A picture of this egg was shared by the IAA on their official Facebook page along with a small note, “Intact chicken egg dating from roughly 1,000 years ago was revealed during archaeological excavations in Yavne. While excavating an ancient cesspit dating from the Islamic period, Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists in Yavne were astonished to find an unbroken chicken’s egg.”
03/3What experts said about it!
As per an official statement by IAA on their Facebook handle, a large scale excavation was carried out as a part of Israel Land Authority’s urban expansion project in the city of Yavne. This was directed by Dr. Elie Haddad, Liat Nadav-Ziv and Dr. Jon Seligman. While sharing their experience and discoveries, Dr. Lee Perry Gal of the Israel Antiquities Authority and a leading expert on poultry in the ancient world,expressed that “Eggshell fragments are known from earlier periods, for example in the City of David and at Caesarea and Apollonia, but due to the eggs’ fragile shells, hardly any whole chicken eggs have been preserved. Even at the global level, this is an extremely rare find.” Adding to this Alla Nagorsky, field supervisor at the site expressed, “Even today, eggs rarely survive for long in supermarket cartons. It’s amazing to think this is a 1,000-year-old find!”
As per the report, the egg got a few cracks but its egg still has a yolk, which has been preserved for DNA analysis. But the question remains, how did the egg land up in a cesspit?
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