In this season of renewal in a fractured world, Muslim is pitted against Christian, white against black, and the American party establishment against angry voters. There seems no end to what divides us, from politics to religion to income. Yet there is one small object that will unite many peoples and faiths around the planet as spring begins.
That is the humble egg.
Jews celebrating Passover will dip them in salt water while Iranian families enjoy kuku sabzi, a tasty mixture of fresh herbs and eggs served on the eve of the Nowruz festival. Meanwhile, millions of Muslims and Christians will join Zoroastrians as they dye eggs in vibrant colors to mark the miracle of life's return.
Each group has a different protocol and purpose for what amounts to an annual global festival of eggs. At the root of each tradition, however, is a surprisingly old, widespread, and enduring belief in the sacredness of the egg's maker. From a theological perspective, at least, there's no doubt that the chicken came first.
Yes, the chicken. The ancients believed that our modern byword for cowardice and stupidity was a sacred animal.
"The rooster is created to oppose demons and sorcerers," states one Zoroastrian tradition. "It raises its voice and calls men to prayer." This ancient Persian religion saw the bird as the harbinger of the end of darkness, a sign of the ultimate triumph of good over evil, and eating it was strictly taboo.
As the Persian Empire expanded in the early centuries B.C., it brought the chicken -- likely domesticated thousands of years earlier in Southeast Asia -- to western Asia, northern Africa, and Europe. The exotic bird was an immediate sensation, accorded divine status by Babylonian priests and kept in royal zoos by Egyptian pharaohs.
The ancient Greeks were in awe of the creature. "Nourish a cock, but sacrifice it not; for it is sacred to the sun and moon," advised the mystic and mathematician Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C.
Despite Pythagoras' maxim, Greeks frequently sacrificed the bird in the spa-hospitals of the classical world, since the god of healing, Asclepius, favored the animal. Socrates' last words were about owing Asclepius a chicken.
The bird was lauded by the ancients for its remarkable ability to procreate quickly. Its zest in the act of procreation also won their admiration. The Greek god Zeus gave the handsome Ganymede a live rooster, and older aristocratic Athenians in Aristotle's day presented their young male lovers with such a bird.
"Throughout classical antiquity," writes the art historian Lorrayne Baird, "the cock serves as icon and symbol of the male erotic urge."
The Romans took chicken awe to new heights. No general or admiral would dare go into battle without first consulting the sacred birds kept on board naval ships and in army encampments, cared for by a specialist called a pullarius.
If they refused to peck heartily away at their food, then defeat would surely follow. "Let them drink, since they don't wish to eat," one arrogant consul said, tossing their pen overboard before attacking an enemy fleet. He was, naturally, defeated, and his blasphemy long remembered.
Christians carried on the respect accorded the chicken in classical times. Jesus is said by tradition to have been born and resurrected as roosters made their pre-dawn call. Christ also predicted in the Gospels that Peter would deny him three times before the cock's crow on Good Friday.
Pope Gregory I decreed in the late 6th century A.D. that the bird was Christianity's most suitable emblem. A massive gilded chicken topped Old St. Peter's Basilica, and a pope in the 10th century made it mandatory for other churches to place a rooster on top of their highest spire. Medieval clergy were called, without irony, "Cocks of the Almighty."
As Islam burst out of Arabia in the 7th century A.D., special rank was accorded the bird. "When you listen to the crowing of the cock," the prophet Muhammad would tell his followers, "ask Allah for His favor as it sees Angels."
Though the chicken doesn't appear in the Hebrew Bible, Jews in medieval Iraq began to wave a live bird -- a hen for a woman and a rooster for a man -- around their heads on the eve of Yom Kippur to remove any sin. "Children of men who sit in darkness," the chant begins, recalling the bird's ancient association with light. The ceremony of kapparot is still performed today among many Hasidic Jews.
Meanwhile, the chicken quickly assumed a pivotal role in many African traditions as it spread below the Sahara after 1000 A.D. Among the Yoruba in today's Nigeria, the bird rapidly displaced the indigenous pigeon as the center of their creation mythology. It became a favorite sacrificial animal across West Africa, and this practice made its way via the slave trade to the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Santeria tradition, combining Catholic and African beliefs, continues to use the chicken for ritual slaughter. Even the late Antonin Scalia, a devout Catholic, joined other Supreme Court justices in 1993 to protect the right of Santeria followers to conduct these activities. "The sacrifice of animals as part of religious rituals has ancient roots," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in a rare unanimous opinion.
But our Puritan ancestors were squeamish about the chicken's power. They viewed the male bird as a lust-filled servant of the devil, so they banished the very term cock and revived the Old English term rooster. That's why we Americans speak of weathervanes and faucets instead of weathercocks and water cocks.
Today, chickens are virtually invisible as living animals, much less as sacred ones. Most of us no longer think of them as creatures that connect us to heaven, regularly pronounce the triumph of good over evil, or give their lives for religious sacrifice.
Instead, they are primarily meat and egg machines that fuel our growing global demand for cheap protein while enduring conditions that are among the most wretched of all farm animals. In the United States alone, hens churn out 50 billion eggs annually.
But while the chicken's ancient role may be largely forgotten, the egg remains full of meaning, the one essential ingredient in our myriad spring festivals. With its smooth shell and elegant shape, it cannot be divided without destroying its integrity. It can absorb any color or be transformed into a dazzling array of foods.
Today, the world often seems like Humpty Dumpty after his fall, a shattered and confusing mess. Among what seem to be insurmountable divisions, there is little agreement on how to piece it together into a whole.
Our egg rituals give us a chance to consider new possibilities as we all, in our various and sundry ways, celebrate the return of spring. We may disagree, argue, and even fight, but our eggs, whether seasoned with salt or herbs or shaded blue, green, and red, speak to our deeper yearning for wholeness and the promise of new life.
Andrew Lawler is a science writer and author of Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization. The paperback will be published April 26. See www.andrewlawler.com for more.