To imagine Egypt, you must imagine an entire country covered by an immense desert. Jagged mountains of rock and soft, undulating dunes of sand. Then, you must imagine the Nile. That enormous torrent of African water twisting through the desert like a life-bringing vine. You also must imagine the Egyptian people living on the banks of the Nile. An ancient culture rooted in a powerful pharaoh-ruled civilization.

I traveled through Egypt recently. Egypt exceeded everything I had imagined about it.

Chicken blogger rides camel
(photo: Randy Graham)

To imagine Egypt, you must imagine Egyptian chickens. Yes, chickens. Of course, chickens. You can be sure that before I traveled there, I was doing just that. And when I arrived, you can be sure that my chicken radar was switched on. You’re not surprised, right? I’m the guy that writes this chicken blog. Meeting the local poultry when I’m traveling in another country is my idea of a really good time. A year ago, I was rambling through Spain and Portugal and was delighted to get up close and personal with the Iberian poultry. In 2019 I was happy to make the acquaintance of the chickens in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Then came Egypt. In 1323, a few centuries before I arrived, an Irish friar named Simon Fitzsimmons arduously journeyed to Cairo. This was at a time when everybody had a few chickens scratching in the dirt outside their hovels. But what the good friar saw in Egypt amazed him. Thousands of chickens wandering the streets of Cairo; pecking up grain that had fallen from the bags carried by passing camels. Would my experience in modern Cairo mirror Friar Fitzsimmons’s experience? I didn’t expect that it would. But I did expect that I would cross paths with some poultry. And I was eager to meet them!

But then I didn’t meet them! Hardly at all, anyway. I started my journey through Egypt in Cairo—the very place that boasted a veritable cornucopia of hens and roosters eight centuries before. I saw not one. But, okay. While I’ve seen chickens in other large cities, urban chickens are not the norm. I expected an uptick in my chicken encounters as I traveled to more rural areas of Egypt. As I moved south through the small towns and the Egyptian countryside along the Nile, I noticed plenty of cats and dogs. And camels? Of course, camels! Donkeys and horses? Yep. Cows and goats? Check!

But no chickens. I finally asked the Egyptologist leading our group. She explained that everybody keeps chickens on their rooftops! I can’t imagine why people would keep them on their roof. Maybe it's to keep them safe from predators. Maybe it's just what they do.

Finally, in the market square of Esna, a small town 450 miles (700 km) south of Cairo, my tour leader flagged me down and proudly pointed to some tiny cages. Chickens. The sweet feathered girls incarcerated there appeared healthy, well-cared for, and seemed stoic about their imprisonment. Maybe they’d never experienced the free-range-good-life. I knew about it though, and was sad for them. The guy in charge of the chickens opened a cage door for me. I wasn’t sure what he expected me to do. Tamping down an urge to stage a rescue and run for the hills, I cupped my hand and reached gently into the cage. The hens eyed me warily and backed into the corners. Then, the chicken guy shut the door and I walked away. And that was it. That was my entire Egyptian chicken experience.

As I researched for this article, I ran across the 2016 University of Chicago PhD dissertation on “avian resources in Pharonic Egypt” by Dr. Rozenn F. Bailleul-LeSuer. It confirmed the “chickens-on-the-rooftop” idea. “In large cities such as Cairo,” Dr. Bailleul-LeSuer reports, “birds are strictly kept on rooftops or the unfinished upper floors of houses. They are fed food scraps and leftovers, to which can be added corn and clover.” But then, she goes on to discuss rural villages, where chickens are “owned by all families, being an inexpensive bird to raise, as it spends its day scavenging in the courtyard and in the alleys of the village.” Where were all those scavenging chickens? Why didn’t I see them? Maybe I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe the chickens were.

And that could be the end of my report on Egyptian chickens.

But it occurred to me that there’s another, more interesting story regarding chickens in Egypt. It’s the story of ancient chickens in ancient Egypt. Chickens were first domesticated from the red jungle fowl in Southeast Asia about 8000 years ago. They multiplied and spread, first, very slowly across other parts of Asia, where they crossbred with other jungle fowl until they became the modern chickens we have today. They eventually found their way to the Middle East.

Egyptians first developed a writing system, hieroglyphics, over 5000 years ago. They’ve been recording events, the important and the mundane, over that immense span of time. Is there a recorded history of the Egyptian civilization’s first encounters with chickens? Without a doubt. I actually ran across some of that recorded history while I was in Egypt. And when I returned home, I spent a solid month doing some research. The story of the early history of chickens in Egypt is a fascinating one. This is my version of that story.

Friar Fitzsimmons – 1323

Simon Fitzsimmons, (aka Simon Semeonis) was the 14th century Irish friar who saw all those chickens up there in the fourth paragraph. At a time when most people didn’t travel more than a few miles from the place they were born, Friar Fitzsimmons went on an amazing journey. In 1323, he packed a small bag and with his friend and fellow friar, Hugo the Illuminator, traveled to England. They crossed the channel to France. Then they went on to Italy. Then to Greece. Eventually they found their way to Jerusalem. And from there, they crossed the Sinai to Egypt where they visited both Cairo and Alexandria. Much to the delight of readers of the last seven centuries, Fitzsimmons wrote about his travels.

Cairo amazed Fitzsimmons. But the Cairo chickens astounded him. To be clear, it was not the chickens that he found astounding, but their vast numbers. There were chickens back in Ireland, of course. Maybe Fitzsimmons had chickens at his friary. The friary hens would probably start laying eggs in the spring. The friars would eat some eggs and the hens would brood the rest. After a month of nesting, the hens would lead their retinue of peeping babies around the grounds. Then, by summer’s end, most of the young roosters would go into the stewpot. And most of the hens and the occasional rooster would live in a coop over the winter. In the spring there would be more eggs, more chicks, and the cycle would continue. That’s how everybody raised chickens in 14th century Ireland. And it's how everybody everywhere in the world raised chickens until 1879. That's when Lyman Bryce invented the first coal-oil-powered egg incubator. It was only with the invention of the artificial incubator that chicken production scaled up to a level that put chickens and eggs in everybody's larder on a regular basis.

Friar Fitzsimmons wondered about the huge flocks of chickens in the streets of Cairo. He exclaimed that chickens existed in such enormous quantities that they were sold not by number, but by measure, like wheat. How could there be so many chickens?

With wide-eyed astonishment, the good friar explained the magical alchemical process. The Egyptians could make baby chicks from eggs without the need for hens or roosters. “Chickens are generated by fire from hen eggs, without cocks and hens, and in such quantities that they cannot be numbered.” Spontaneous generation? The friar was confused. He had seen an Egyptian egg oven.

Egg Ovens

Picture a two-tiered mud-brick structure. You put fertilized eggs on the bottom level. On the top, you fire up some dried animal dung. Wood is in short supply in Egypt, but dried dung is an effective fuel. A smoldering fire keeps the oven comfortably toasty. Once you’ve got a warm environment, you need to keep the eggs moist and constantly check them and turn them. Then, almost miraculously, they turn into baby chicks. The number of eggs you can hatch in one incubation cycle depends only on the size of the oven. Typically egg ovens produced up to five thousand chicks per cycle, a quantity that has never failed to impress foreign visitors.

Egg ovens, of course, are incubators. The invention of coal-oil-powered incubators in the late 1800’s was simply the rest of the world catching up with a process the Egyptians had perfected long, long before. Egg ovens are still used in modern Egypt. I would have enjoyed visiting one, but my tour was not that sort of tour. Friar Fitzsimmons hit the jackpot, though. He not only got to see all those chickens, he saw egg ovens, too. They were obviously in common use by his visit in the 1300’s. But how long had they been in use? When were they first invented?

Diodorus Siculus – 60 BC

In 60 BC, Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus (aka Diodorus of Sicily) began writing his monumental 40-volume Bibliotheca Historica. In one short passage, he describes the poultry farmers of Egypt who “raise [poultry] by their own hands, by virtue of a skill peculiar to them, in numbers beyond telling. For they do not use the birds for hatching the eggs, but…by [incubating] artificially with their own wit and skill, in an astounding manner, they are not surpassed by the operations of nature.”

Is Diodorus describing egg ovens? It sounds like it, wouldn’t you say? Based on this passage, we can dial artificial incubation from the 1300’s all the way back to 60 BC—over 2000 years ago. And we can also conclude that if there were chicken incubators and chicken farmers in Egypt at that time, there were also lots of chickens.

Aristotle – 300 BC

Two hundred years before Diodorus, Aristotle wrote in his Historia Animalium that Egyptians were artificially incubating eggs in dung heaps. While actively composting manure piles do produce heat, there is no other mention by anyone that suggests anybody used this method to incubate eggs in Egypt or anywhere.

Could Aristotle have gotten his information slightly wrong? Could he be describing a process where heat is produced by burning dung? Is this egg ovens again? If so, it would push egg ovens back to the 4th century BC.

As my research continued to move egg ovens further back in time, I ran across an interesting nugget in the Bailleul-LeSuer dissertation. She speculates on the possibility that egg ovens were being used to incubate both crocodile and ibis eggs, two sacred animals in the religion of ancient Egypt. Maybe egg ovens predate chickens! The age-old question has always been, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Maybe eggs came first. But maybe they weren’t chicken eggs.

If egg ovens existed in Egypt before the arrival of chickens, the joining of artificial incubation and a fowl that laid copious amounts of eggs would have been the perfect marriage. It would have turned Egypt, already the ancient world’s agricultural powerhouse, into the world’s first poultry-producing powerhouse.

And if this was the perfect marriage the next important question is, “When was the wedding?” When did chickens show up in Egypt and start laying eggs for the preexisting egg ovens?

Cambyses II and the Persians – 525 BC

What do you do when you live in the shadow of a famous father? This was the dilemma of Cambyses, son of Cyrus the Great. Cyrus conquered a large part of the ancient world and formed the Persian Empire. That was a hard act for Cambyses to follow when he inherited the throne after Cyrus’s death.

Cambyses looked around. Well…there was Egypt over there. Nobody had ever conquered Egypt! Cambyses assembled his army.

In 525 BC, the army of the Persian Empire attacked and conquered Egypt. Nobody had ever conquered Egypt. The Persian takeover ended the governance of Egypt by Egyptian pharaohs. It had spanned 26 dynasties and had lasted over 25 centuries.

Cambyses was a clever military tactician. One strategy: He positioned animals sacred to the Egyptians at the Persian front lines. Mixed in with the soldiers were cats and dogs. And who knows what other animals the Persians were able to get their hands on. Were there ibises? Crocodiles? Can you imagine crocodiles in all their reptilian splendor hanging out at the front lines?! The Egyptian army, afraid of offending the gods, refused to attack.

Cambyses was also politically clever. He arranged to have himself crowned pharaoh in a religious ritual that included sacrifices to the Egyptian gods. He assured the people of Egypt that he was simply the next pharaoh in a long line of pharaohs and took the traditional title of "king of Upper and Lower Egypt." He also claimed that his mother was an Egyptian princess—the daughter of a pharaoh. “Nothing to see here, folks. Just another Egyptian pharaoh ascending the throne.”

Cambyses probably felt like he was at the beginning of a long and illustrious career as conqueror, king, and pharaoh. But after a few years of ruling Egypt and a few more conquests in North Africa, he got word of a rebellion in Persia, packed up his army and set out for home. On the trip home, he got a nasty thigh wound, gangrene set in, and he died.

Conquering Egypt did change the course of history. In his short reign, Cambyses earned a place beside his father rather than in his shadow. To borrow a phrase coined by a later military leader, Cambyses came, saw, and conquered. And he brought chickens. Solid evidence points to chickens coming to Egypt and becoming established in Egyptian culture as a source of meat and eggs during Persian rule.

The Persians certainly had chickens. The Greek writer Aristophanes, in his play The Birds, refers to the chicken as “The Persian bird.” It is logical that the Persian bird would arrive in Egypt along with the Persians.

The Persian empire was enormous. It stretched from Egypt all the way to the Indus Valley where chickens had been domestic fowl since 2000 BC. The Persians ruled this huge area with efficiency. They built excellent roads that allowed for easy trade between different regions.

It is easy to see how the Indus Valley chicken could travel along these roads to become the Egyptian chicken. Combining these egg-a-day birds with artificial incubation made chickens and eggs the common protein food of the average Egyptian. He could head to the market and pick up five eggs for only two obols. Or grab a rooster for four drachmai!

The extensive Egyptian written record makes no mention of chickens before 2000 BC, and after 2000 BC chicken references were rare. Until the Persian conquest. Suddenly chickens were everywhere. Egyptian funerary custom was to place food in the tomb so the deceased would have sustenance on their journey into the afterlife. Mummified chickens have been found only in post-Persian-conquest tombs. And post-Persian-conquest, chickens also became popular subjects in tomb art.

Rooster from house tomb - 2nd-3rd Century AD (photo taken in Egyptian Museum by Randy Graham)

We’ve established that all evidence points to chickens arriving in Egypt during and after the Persian conquest of 525 BC. But there’s a problem. There are ancient recorded instances of chickens clucking and pecking around Egypt before the Persians arrived. Way before! Thousands of years! Granted, these early occurrences are rare. But their scarcity makes them all the more unique and interesting. Read Part Two to get the scoop on the early birds!