What an Eggcellent Occasion!

Today I read a nice article about egg shells on CMI:

An eggcellent design : Eggshell nanostructure shows purposeful construction
by Phil Robinson | This article is from
Creation 40(4):24–26, October 2018
https://creation.com/eggshell-design

That CMI have lots of Intelligent Design arguments which, as a non-specialist, I cannot equal, is no news. Just enjoy ...

BUT - there was a link back to an older article:

What’s in an Egg? Unscrambling the mysteries
by David Catchpoole | This article is from
Creation 24(3):41–43, June 2002
https://creation.com/whats-in-an-egg

Mostly eggcellent stuff, to keep up the pun (H/T to Phil Robinson!) but also something Catchpool got eggsquisitly wrong:

Eggs have long been hand-coloured and exchanged, apparently as part of the pre-Christian ‘rites of spring’.1 It is easy to see how the egg would be regarded as symbolic of the renewal of life after a long cold winter. In many cultures, the egg represented fertility and was a sacred symbol to the Babylonians.

For footnote 1, they cite a seemingly secular and not sectarianly biassed source, Ohio State University:

Page not found
The requested page "/fcs/openhearthapr23.html" could not be found.
fairfield.osu.edu/fcs/openhearthapr23.html

Oops, sth wrong about the source? Was it taken down? It could be the URL just changed, so, I searched their site:

No Results
Search for Eggs have long been hand-coloured and exchanged, apparently as part of the pre-Christian ‘rites of spring’. on Google
https://www.osu.edu/search.html?query=Eggs%20have%20long%20been%20hand-coloured%20and%20exchanged%2C%20apparently%20as%20part%20of%20the%20pre-Christian%20%E2%80%98rites%20of%20spring%E2%80%99.

Searching on Google, the closest match comes here:

Time : Here's Why Easter Eggs Are a Thing
By Olivia B. Waxman | Updated: March 29, 2018 4:39 PM ET
Originally published: April 14, 2017
https://time.com/4732984/easter-eggs-history-origins/

Now, Olivia Waxman at Time ... gives this:

“Many scholars believe that Easter had its origins as an early Anglo-Saxon festival that celebrated the goddess Eastre, and the coming of spring, in a sense a resurrection of nature after winter,” Carole Levin, Professor of History and Director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Nebraska, tells TIME in an email. “Some Christian missionaries hoped that celebrating Christian holy days at the same times as pagan festivals would encourage conversion, especially if some of the symbols carried over. Eggs were part of the celebration of Eastre. Apparently eggs were eaten at the festival and also possibly buried in the ground to encourage fertility.”

• a) Carole Levin could be Jewish - Jews don't have Easter eggs during the Pesakh Seder, and they often like pointing out evidence that Christian Easter is Pagan, whether it is true or not;
• b) Time ran the story two years in a row, 2017 and 2018 : as we don't see the headings of the email, we don't know if it was part of original story, probably, or part of the update, but either way Carole Levin was not sending this out in two emails two years in a row, and if (as is probable) the latter version repeated this part from previous year's story, perhaps it's because Carole Levin and others were not found to repeat this in 2018 and I suspect the following paragraph may have been what was added:
  
  

  An alternate Easter eggs story does stick with Christianity, but in that version the Eastern eggs may have been a matter of practicality. Back then, the rules for fasting during Lent were much stricter than they are today. Christians were not allowed to eat meat or any animal product — including cheese, milk, cream or eggs —so they hard-boiled the eggs their chickens would produce during that time, and stored them so they could distribute them later, according to Henry Kelly, a professor of medieval studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Because Lent ends in the lead-up to Easter, that “later” at which the eggs would be given out (often to the poor, who were unable to afford meat for their celebrations) would naturally happen right around the holiday.

  
  
  
• c) the Pagan version cites Anglo-Saxons, but not Sumerians or Babylonians or Assyrians;
• d) and the story as it follows has earlistes English evidence for Easter eggs from 1290:
  
  

  One of the earliest pieces of evidence of dyed eggs in British history goes back to 1290, when the household of Edward I bought 450 eggs to be colored or covered in gold leaf to be distributed among “the royal entourage” for Easter, according to Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain by Ronald Hutton, a history professor at the University of Bristol. The book also mentions that two centuries later, the Vatican sent Henry VIII an egg enclosed in a silver case as a “seasonal present.” Such objects were also known as “eggsilver.” (Today, the most famous ultra-decorated Easter eggs are the Fabergé eggs that were first presented to the Russian royal court in the late 19th century.)

  
  
  By that year, England had been Christian for 600 years and some. Not very promising if you want to cite Anglo-Saxon Paganism (a subject on which we know about only that it involved worshipping Woden, and one of his priests was so agnostic about the afterlife, that he was very impressed Christian Missionaries showed certainty about the subject : he burned his own temple).

But as to Ohio State, you don't find pre-Christian Easter eggs there ... well, in fact you will, but neither Sumerian nor Anglo-Saxon:

"There's an ancient legend that as long as pysanky are made, evil will not prevail in the world," says Joan Brander, a pysanky artist in Richmond, B.C. She's been making pysanky for more than 60 years, having learned the art of the egg from her Ukrainian relatives.

The pysansky tradition, says Brander, dates back to Ukrainian spring rituals in pre-Christian times. The tradition was incorporated into the Christian church, but the old symbols endure. "A pysanka with a bird on it, [when] given to a young married couple, is a wish for children," she explains. "A pysanka thrown into the field would be a wish for a good harvest."

Easter Egg Art: Hatched From An Ancient Tradition To Celebrate Rebirth
By Nancy Shute • Mar 24, 2016
https://radio.wosu.org/post/eggs-become-art-celebrate-lifes-rebirth

So, the one telling us Easter Eggs are pre-Christian is not a Sumerologist, not a professor in Medieval History, but the artist Joan Brander, who may have heard this from Ukraine during the Communist era, due to Communist misinformation.

Just checking that David Catchpoole himself is not an authority (accredited at least) on the historic background of Easter Eggs:

His Ph.D. investigated nitrogen transfer between tree legumes, associated grass and ruminant animals (goats). This was undertaken in Indonesia as part of a joint Australia-Indonesia project in forage research, aimed at improving the quality and availability of animal feed.

So, can we get an Academic about the Easter Egg subject? Yes, here she is:

Scientific American : Anthropology in Practice
Beyond Ishtar: The Tradition of Eggs at Easter : Don't believe every meme you encounter.
By Krystal D'Costa on March 31, 2013
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/beyond-ishtar-the-tradition-of-eggs-at-easter/

Krystal D'Costa is an anthropologist working in digital media in New York City.

And what does she say about Babylon?

Our helpful meme places the egg in Ishtar's domain, but Ishtar doesn't seem to be connected to eggs in any explicit way. However, there are plenty of other older traditions that involve the egg as a symbol of rebirth and feature it prominently in creation mythologies:

She mentions creation myths, but not one single ritual.

In fact, she does mention Christians reusing a Pagan meme, first citing:

The ancient legend of the Phoenix is similar. This beautiful mythical bird was said to live for hundreds of years. When its full span of life was completed it died in flames, rising again in a new form from the egg it had laid (4).

From (according to foornote 4) Newall: 14 = Newall, Venetia. (1967) "Easter Eggs," The Journal of American Folklore Vol 80 (315): 3-32.

The she comments:

The Phoenix was adopted as a Christian symbol in the first century AD. It appears on funeral stones in early Christian art, churches, religious paintings, and stonework. The egg from which it rose has become our Easter egg.

But then Phoenix is neither Babylonian, nor Ukrainean, nor Anglo-Saxon : it is simply a non-idolised symbol current in pre-Christian lore in the Empire where it began. A bit like calling (as I think an early Christian hymn or Antenicene Father did) Christ the "new Orpheus" or the "true Orpheus", the one who didn't just try to but actually succeeded to give his bride an Exodus from Sheol.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Dedication of Sts Peter and Paul in Rome
18.XI.2019

Romae Dedicatio Basilicarum sanctorum Petri et Pauli Apostolorum. Earum primam, restitutam in ampliorem formam, Summus Pontifex Urbanus Octavus consecravit hac ipsa recurrente die; alteram vero, miserando incendio penitus consumptam, ac magnificentius reaedificatam, Pius, Nonus die decima Decembris solemni ritu consecravit, ejusque annuam commemorationem hodierna die agendam indixit.