Eggs as grave goods
Eggs as grave goods are known from different cultures. Both real eggs and artificial eggs made from different materials are given.
Selected finds
In Apulian graves (as in Alezio , Mesagne and Oria ) from the 5th century BC Chicken eggs or eggs made of clay were found. In the neighboring Greek colony of Metapont it was bronze eggs that can be opened in the middle. Colorful chicken and goose eggs were also found in Etruscan Roman , Roman-Germanic, Celtic , Slavic and Eastern Mediterranean graves.
Several graves with eggs are known from the Roman Rhineland . In the municipal necropolises of the CCAA , chicken eggs were found in connection with the dishes, so they are part of the food. A special find are painted goose eggs from grave 11 from Hürth-Hermülheim , a necropolis with over 40 burials , dating back to the first half of the 4th century . Since one of these eggs was in drinking vessels, it was probably also intended for consumption. The other goose egg was found near perfume bottles and may have been used to make cosmetics. Other grave goods of the rich tomb 11, the funeral of a 40 to 50-year-old woman, include ceramic vessels and glass, at least one coin, leg needles and a distaff of ivory. Other painted goose eggs come from a Roman sarcophagus from the 4th century in Worms .
The egg additions in the Grafendobrach grave field ( Kulmbach , Upper Franconia ) from the 9th and 10th centuries were exclusively in children's graves. In Avar cemetery of Alattyán (708 graves; 27 women, 13 in children, eight in men, 10 Indeterminate) this is not the case.
Cultural and historical backgrounds
Egg additions in graves cannot be given a uniform meaning because they come from different cultures and eggs can have different associations within one culture.
An example of an apparently mythological background is a small stone egg from a metapontine grave, from which a tiny woman looks out: Helena . The daughter of Zeus in the form of a swan hatched from an egg. Depending on the variant of the myth, Leda , who seduced Zeus in the form of a swan, or Nemesis , the goddess of fate, was her mother. This representation is on red-figure Apulian vases from the 4th century BC. To find. At that time, the egg was not only a symbol of fertility and life for the ancient Greeks, but also a symbol of the resurrection and thus also of the death that had to precede.
The egg is still a symbol of the resurrection in the Eastern Church.
literature
- Elke Böhr: The egg in Greek and Roman antiquity. In: R. Jakob (Ed.), Surprise: Egg. From creation myth to art object. Exhibition catalog Schöngeising 2009. pp. 42–53.
- Ingo Gabriel: Kiev Easter Eggs . In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde Vol. 16, Berlin 2000, pp. 467–468.
- Raymund Gottschalk: Dyed in the grave - two goose eggs from Roman times. Reports from the LVR State Museum. Bonn 1/2011. P. 14 f.