Archaeologists Discover—and Crack—an Intact, 1,000-Year-Old Chicken Egg

Researchers in Israel have discovered an intact chicken egg laid about 1,000 years ago—though the delicate object cracked in the lab.

“We were astonished to find it,” Alla Nagorsky, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), tells Haaretz’s Ruth Schuster. “From time to time we find fragments of eggshells, but a whole egg is extraordinary.”

The team discovered the egg in a cesspit in the industrial zone of the ancient city of Yavneh. As Amy Spiro reports for the Times of Israel, the egg remained unbroken for so long because it was pillowed in soft human waste, which created anaerobic, or oxygen-free, conditions and prevented its decay.

“Even today, eggs rarely survive for long in supermarket cartons,” says Nagorsky in a statement. “It’s amazing to think this is a 1,000-year-old find!”

Per the statement, the shell cracked despite staff taking “extreme caution” when removing it from the cesspit under the supervision of an experienced conservationist. Luckily, Ilan Naor, director of the IAA’s Organic Materials Conservation Laboratory, was able to repair the crack. While much of the egg’s contents leaked out, some of the yolk remained, and the researchers preserved it for future DNA analysis.

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