Archaeologists have unearthed an intact chicken egg dating back to the Byzantine period, roughly 1,000 years old. During the excavation of an ancient cesspit in the city of Yavne, part of a large-scale archeological undertaking by the Israel Land Authority, researchers were astonished to find the fully intact egg. The sight was located in an “extensive and diverse” industrial area of the city which dates back to the Islamic period. Poultry farming was first introduced to Israel 2,300 years ago, during the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, the Israeli Antiquities Authority stated. “Eggshell fragments are known from earlier periods, for example in the City of David and at Caesarea and Apollonia, but due to the eggs’ fragile shells, hardly any whole chicken eggs have been preserved. Even at the global level, this is an extremely rare find,” said the Authority’s Dr. Lee Perry Gal, a leading expert on poultry in the …