[Sca-cooks] Period breeds of chickens

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Marcus wrote:
> In Western Europe some of the oldest breeds are the Fayoumi (dating to Pharonic 
> Egypt)...
SNIP

> Fayoumi have not changed in the millenia, having been largely separated from other 
> breeds by the desert and the Muslim world.They have remained as the Pharaohs knew 
> them, a bird with the same upright carriage of the Leghorn, and bold aggressive 
> personality but striped black and white, laying smaller white/cream eggs at an 
> early age!

I am currently reading a book on the history of food in medieval Muslim Egypt - Food and Foodways of Medieval Cairenes: Aspects of Life in an Islamic Metropolis of the Eastern Mediterranean, by Paulina B. Lewicka, published by Brill. The author says that while the Egyptians ate many kinds of birds during the Pharaonic period - and provides a pretty good list of varieties - there were no chickens in Egypt before Ptolomeic times, that is, the Hellenistic or Greco-Egyptian period, 305 BCE–30 BCE. After this time the Romans took over, but she says she has not found evidence of chickens there until the Byzantine period, which began in the 4th c. when Constantine became Roman Emperor.

And there are still, according to Lewicka, no good records of chickens in Egypt until after the Muslim invasion (ca. 640 CE). She says that the Egyptian chicken industry was so advanced at that time, however, that it likely began during the period of Byzantine rule, although there is little record of the Byzantine Egyptians eating chickens.

Lewicka gives much information on the extensive nature of the chicken industry in Egypt in medieval times, including a system of incubators, which visiting Europeans called "ovens". And she says that because of this, within the period she covers, from Fatimid through Mamluk dynasties (10th c through early Ottoman rule of Egypt), Egyptians were little familiar with the natural hatching of eggs, and when an Egyptian observed it in Syria he was rather surprised. Sorry, i don't have the book with me or i'd quote more details. Apparently the Egyptian chicken industry was much written about by visiting Arab scholars and by European visitors.

I would be interested in more information about Fayoumi chickens being in Pharaonic Egypt, since Lewicka seems to have missed it.

Urtatim (that's oor-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita