Israeli Archaeologists Found 1000 Year Old Chicken Eggs Intact in Human Faces

Eggs are extremely fragile and keeping them intact for a long time seems almost impossible. A lot of care is required to handle them to avoid breakage. However, that’s probably not the case with this 1000-year-old chicken egg that was found unharmed. In Israel, a team of archeologists found this unbroken egg with yolk from a sewage-disposal tank during a large-scale excavation in the town of Yavne as a part of the Israel Land Authority's urban expansion project. The fact that this egg remained undamaged in human faces for long 1000 years is astonishing and has left everyone surprised. The yolk of the egg has been preserved for DNA analysis.

Israel Antiquities Authority shared the picture of this egg on its Facebook page and wrote, “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.”

Dr. Lee Perry Gal, one of the experts from IAA shared his experience and said, "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." The field supervisor named Alla Nagorsky also stated, "Even today, eggs rarely survive for long in supermarket cartons. It's amazing to think this is a 1,000-year-old find!"