Egg Decorations Then

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Art and Environment
Culture
Archaeology
Edward Hessler

Humans have been doing, making art for a long time and on a variety of surfaces, including themselves.

Here you will find a picture of two elaborately decorated eggs "found inside the tombs of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern elites who lived from about 2500 to 500 BCE."

These are not small eggs but ostrich eggs which allowed the artists to engrave, not something so easily done on eggs as we tend to think about them.

These findings are from the journal Antiquity and there you can see another photo, a fragment and read the abstract. The full journal article is hidden, protected by a subscription wall.

Michael Price explains in the accompanying essay. The research, he wrote, underlines "the intense effort and skill that went into making these ovular ornaments."