Tom Metcalfe is a freelance journalist and regular Live Science contributor who is based in London in the United Kingdom. Tom writes mainly about science, space, archaeology, the Earth and the oceans. He has also written for the BBC, NBC News, National Geographic, Scientific American, Air & Space, and many others.
A three-dimensional scan of a 1,700-year-old egg discovered at a Roman site in England reveals that, eggs-traordinarily, it still has the remains of a yolk and egg white inside."We were absolutely blown away when we saw the contents in there, as we might have expected them to have leached out," Edward Biddulph, a senior project manager at the private company Oxford Archaeology, told BBC News.
Roman eggsThe eggs were found in a waterlogged pit at the Aylesbury site, which was being excavated by Oxford Archaeology ahead of a housing development. The archaeologists found evidence of habitation there dating back to the Neolithic period, and the pit dated from the third century A.D., when England was a part of the Roman Empire.
Organic objects usually rot away when exposed to oxygen, but here many were preserved by the waterlogged soil. As well as the eggs, which seem to have been an offering of some sort, the pit contained a wooden basket, leather shoes, and wooden vessels and tools. The Oxford Archaeology statement noted that the Romans often ascribed symbolic meanings to eggs; they were associated with the gods Mithras and Mercury and had connotations of fertility and rebirth.—Sacred chickens, witches and animal entrails: 7 unusual ancient Roman superstitionsThe intact egg from Aylesbury was taken to the Natural History Museum in London, where experts were consulted about how to conserve it without breaking it.