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The Eggcellent Egg Eggsplained

© Sharon K. West

The egg is the star of many legends and old wives' tales. Eggs have been revered, exchanged, and used in rituals since ancient times and continue to this day as metaphors of possibility whether of ideas or the start of new things. Just where did our love affair with the egg begin?

May we first answer the age-old question, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Actually, the answer to that is the egg came first. Eggs existed before chickens were chickens. They were not the first to lay them. The domestication of the chicken came about before documented history, but the earliest known date is 3,200 B.C. recorded in Indian history. Egyptian and Chinese records indicate 1,400 B.C.

One of the first known reptiles to lay an egg was the Hylonomus of Nova Scotia in Canada. The earliest unhatched bird fossil ever found was unearthed in China. It is estimated at 121 million years old. The extinct elephant bird, a 10 ft. flightless bird in Madagascar, laid the largest egg of all. At 24 lbs., its contents would fill a two-gallon bucket.

Beginning in ancient times, eggs were considered to be symbols of life. Many cultures in history believed an egg was involved in creation. This egg is called the cosmic egg. One example is from Greek and Roman mythology where a goddess born from chaos created a serpent partner. She laid a huge egg which the serpent fertilized. Everything then hatched from this egg.

Tibetan creation myth includes a primordial cosmic egg as well. Some of the elements differ, however. One version of this egg story has a luminous egg that can fly with no wings, and it could see, hear and speak even though it had no eyes, ears or mouth. When this egg hatched, a man came out who ordered the world. He was given the name "He Who Assigns" or "the Elect, He who Knows the Visible World." Many different versions of this story and other stories of eggs, including magic eggs, appear in Tibetan myth.

African egg myths follow along the same basic lines with many variations in their stories. Hindus have a twist in their cosmic egg in that it contained a spirit that would be born, then die and be reborn. Phoenicians had the birth of heaven and earth from two halves of a huge egg as well. The Egyptians had their god, Ptah, as creator of an egg made from the sun and moon.

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