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Believe it or not, a 1000-year-old chicken egg was recently found almost intact in a cesspit in Israel. A team of archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) discovered this age-old egg in human faeces, during a salvage excavation in the town of Yavne, which was undertaken before a new neighbourhood development. IAA took to their official Facebook page to share the news and wrote alongside, “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.”

According to IAA’s official statement on Facebook, this large-scale archaeological excavation was directed by Dr. Elie Haddad, Liat Nadav-Ziv and Dr. Jon Seligman and was a part of the Israel Land Authority’s urban expansion project in the city of Yavne.

While speaking about the discovery, Dr. Lee Perry Gal of the Israel Antiquities Authority and a leading expert on poultry in the ancient world, stated, “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 of discovery, stated, “Even today, eggs rarely survive for long in supermarket cartons. It’s amazing to think this is a 1,000-year-old find!”

The report further states, despite taking all the necessary measures while relocating the egg, it got a few cracks; due to this, most of the content inside was leaked out. However, the ancient egg still has some yolk in it, which has been preserved for future DNA analysis.

But the question still remains, “How did the egg end up in the cesspit? We will never know,” wrote IAA on Facebook.

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