Ancient Egyptian Artificial Incubation of Eggs
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Learn about the ancient Egyptian artificial incubation of eggs, oven incubator design, and practices used to gauge temperature and humidity.
Using artificial incubators is a common practice in modern hatcheries, and they are used by many backyard poultry owners to hatch chicks. Quail, chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, and turkeys can and are all regularly hatched out in a variety of incubators. But just how long have artificial incubators been around? One hundred years? Maybe two hundred years?
Try over 2,000 years. That’s right. Many ancient writers have commented on seeing or hearing about artificial incubator “ovens” being used in Egypt. In 400 BCE, the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that a strange form of incubation was being performed in ancient Egypt. Eggs “are hatched spontaneously in the ground,” he wrote, “by being buried in dung heaps.” A few hundred years later, the 1st century BCE Greek historian Diodorus Siculus noted a secretive Egyptian method of incubation in his 40-volume, Library of History. “The most astonishing fact is that, by reason of their unusual application to such matters, the men [in Egypt] who have charge of poultry and geese, in addition to producing them in the natural way known to all mankind, raise them by their own hands, by virtue of a skill peculiar to them, in numbers beyond telling.”
Early in the Old Kingdom period (ca. 2649–2130 BCE), Egyptians successfully found ways to reproduce the heat and humidity needed to incubate eggs without a broody hen. By creating mud brick or cob-style ovens, ancient Egyptians could keep fertilized eggs warm in a chamber gently heated by a firebox. Dung, compost, and plant material seem to have been used to keep the heat even and to keep moisture in the egg “oven.” This type of incubator has been in continuous use in Egypt ever since.
17th and 18th-century European travelers to Egypt wrote about the same types of oven incubators. French entomologist René Antione Ferchault de Réaumur, on his visit to one of these ancient hatcheries, wrote that “Egypt ought to be prouder of them than her pyramids.”
Réaumur described buildings about 100 ft. in length, called “incubatories,” which were constructed with four-foot-thick exterior walls consisting of insulative sun-dried mud bricks. Incubatories had a long, central hallway with up to five egg “ovens” on either side. Each oven consisted of a bottom chamber (with only a small opening to regulate moisture loss) where the fertilized eggs were placed. The upper chamber of each oven was used as a firebox to keep eggs warm, and a hole in the roof of that chamber let out the smoke. Incubatories could have up to 200,000 egg capacities, and a family might set 40,000 eggs at a time, directly to poultry farmers.
According to Réaumur (who not only gave detailed descriptions of the oven incubators but built his own while in Egypt), two days before incubation, these fires were started in all the upper rooms and were kept at 110 degrees Fahrenheit before allowing them to drop by ten degrees. Then the oven floors below were covered with a layer of bran, and finally, the fertilized eggs were brought inside and laid on top. Over the next couple of weeks, the eggs were all turned three or four times daily, and the temperature was maintained at 100 degrees F by increasing and diminishing the fires. While Réaumur used a hygrometer during his experiments, generations of Egyptian poultry-raising families had learned to judge temperature and humidity by gently placing eggs against the sensitive skin of their eyelids.
The Egyptian incubatories work well, in large part because desert humidity is quite constant and so easy to regulate. Réaumur noted that when he tried to build an incubatory in France, the much-varied climate made his attempt a failure.
Poultry incubatories in modern Egypt still use oven incubators quite similar to the ancient versions. A number of incubatories have modernized, using electric heat and various practices aimed at improved biosecurity. For example, many now layer rubber pellets under the eggs rather than bran, and minders wear gloves while turning the eggs. Other old incubatories now heat with petrol lamps instead of dung fires but still retain some of the old procedures.
Resources
- Abdelhakim, M. M. A., Thieme, O., Ahmed, Z. S., and Schwabenbauer, K. (2009, March 10-13). Management of Traditional Poultry Hatcheries in Egypt [paper presentation]. The 5th International Poultry Conference, Taba, Egypt.
- Réaumur , René Antione Ferchault de, (1823) Domestick Fowls of All Kinds, translated by A Millar. (London: C. Davis). https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=JndIAAAAYAAJ&pg=GBS.PP8&hl=en
- Sutcliffe, J. H. (1909). Incubation, Natural and Artificial, with Diagrams and Description of Eggs in Various Stages of Incubation, Description of Incubators and Rearers. The Feathered World, London.
- Traverso, V. (2019, March 29). The Egyptian Egg Ovens Considered More Wonderous than the Pyramids. Retrieved Sept. 25, 2021 from Atlas Obscura: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/egypt-egg-ovens
MARK M. HALL lives with his wife, their three daughters, and numerous pets on a four-acre slice of paradise in rural Ohio. Mark is a veteran small-scale chicken farmer and an avid observer of nature. As a freelance writer, he endeavors to share his life experiences in a manner that is both informative and entertaining.