“This is the oldest egg I’ve ever seen that was not intentionally preserved,” Douglas Russell of London’s Natural History Museum, who was asked by archaeologists to help protect the find, told CNN.
A CT scan showed that the egg’s contents remained in place. Russell noted that the museum also houses older, intact eggs, such as a mummified egg found in Egypt in 1898. But they were all deliberately preserved, unlike the Roman egg, which appears to have been left untouched by accident.
Four eggs were discovered in 2010 in the British town of Aylesbury, located 50 miles northwest of London, during excavations on the site of a Roman brewery.
The eggs were found in the pit and archaeologists believe they were deliberately left there as an offering to the gods when the brewery ceased operations around 270 AD. According to archaeologist Edward Biddleph from Oxford Archaeology, three of the eggs were intact, but two were broken during the work and emitted an unpleasant smell of sulfur.
Last August, the last egg was delivered to the University of Kent and subjected to a CT scan, which showed that the yolk and white are preserved, although with changes. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s incredible. It looks fresh.”– commented Bidulph.
The researchers now plan to create a 3D model of the egg and then puncture it to collect the fluid and study it. Analyzes, in particular, will show which bird the find came from, which certainly does not look like a chicken egg.
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