Found intact, the egg from 1,700 years ago
But what a stink when three were smashed
A TEAM of archaeologists set off the world’s oldest stinkbombs when they accidentally broke three out of four Roman eggs they had just found.
But amid the odour of 1,700-yearold rotten egg they managed to keep the fourth one intact, making it the first ever found in Britain.
They discovered the eggs in a basket alongside coins, shoes and wooden tools in a waterlogged pit in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, which they think Romans used as a wishing well.
Project chief Stuart Foreman, of Oxford Archaeology, said: ‘There’s a very good reason it’s the first and only find in the UK. In a pit that has been waterlogged for thousands of years you get things that would never survive in a dry environment.
‘Three eggs broke and let off a potent stench. But it’s incredible we even got one out. They were so fragile.’ His colleague Edward Biddulph said: ‘Passers-by would have perhaps stopped to throw in offerings to make a wish for the gods of the underworld to fulfill. The Romans associated eggs with rebirth and fertility.
‘We have found chicken bones and eggshells in Roman graves in Britain before, but never a complete egg.’
The eggs were found near the A41 where it follows the route of an old Roman road to St Albans.
The world’s only other intact Roman egg was found in Rome itself in 2010.
The British egg, now wrapped in acid-free tissue at Oxford Archaeology’s headquarters, is be displayed at Buckinghamshire County Museum.