In the news
Apr 4, 2010
Humble egg has place in science, myth, art, religion
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
By William Loeffler
They turn up in baskets every Easter, mysteriously delivered to children by that hip-hop artist with the long ears and fluffy tail. But there’s much more to the humble egg than its kitschy association with Peter Cottontail.
That perfect oval shape contains everything, from the tiniest spark of life to the entire cosmos.
That’s a lot of responsibility for something that usually competes with a chicken over which came first.
The present-day Easter egg follows a practice that dates at least as far back as Persia in 3000 B.C., when colored eggs were given to celebrate the coming of spring.
But in the realms of myth, art and science, the egg packs enough symbolism to rival “The Da Vinci Code.”
The egg symbolizes unity for the Hmong, an ethnic hill tribe that migrated from China into Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and later the United States. “The egg is a real sense of unity for people,” says Tracy Johnson, a social and cultural anthropologist who studied the Hmong in northern Thailand. “In the marriage ceremony, they will cut the hard-boiled egg in half and give the groom half and give the bride half. That’s another way the two beings are joined, by partaking of the halves of this egg.” Now the research director for Context-Based Research Group in Baltimore, Johnson says the Hmong communities in America incorporate a cracked hard-boiled egg in their New Year’s ritual.
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