Spring is underway in the United Kingdom, with daffodils blooming outside in gardens and verges, and chocolate eggs multiplying inside our supermarkets. Egg decorating tips have been proliferating across the internet in recent weeks.

Last year, shortly after Covid-19 had been declared a pandemic, Antiquity published our collaborative study on the origins of decorated ostrich eggs in the ancient Mediterranean world. The work garnered global interest as much for its timing as discoveries. It was a non-Covid story when Covid otherwise monopolised news, and who doesn’t appreciate a good egg story around the time of festivals that celebrate rebirth? The significance of that study also has lessons applicable today, as we begin to confront Covid’s economic legacy. Let me explain.

Ostrich eggs were coveted items in the interconnected world of the ancient Greeks, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Assyrians, Egyptians, and others. They have been found primarily in graves, and often in association with other paraphernalia that mark these contexts as elite burials.

The eggs were decorated with ornate carved or painted motifs and usually converted into drinking and pouring vessels through the addition of metal rims and spouts.

When discovered, scholars have focused on the quality and style of the eggs’ decoration, and the elite contexts of their deposition. What is often overlooked is the individuals behind how the eggs came to be there in the first place.

The story of these objects begins with trackers, who had to find nest sites and steal eggs by one means or another. Ostriches were indigenous in antiquity to the Levant, Arabia, and North Africa. An ostrich’s territory can extend across 20km2 and the nests are difficult to spot because they are dug into the ground amid grasses for camouflage.

An ostrich will lay its head flat when it senses a predator, which gave rise to the idea that ostriches bury their heads in the sand. But do not interpret this as passiveness, because the birds can also kill with a single kick. The Assyrians used the image of an ostrich lashing out at their heroic king to promote the ruler’s strength and might. Lions and elephants shared some of these landscapes, adding additional threat. So acquiring an egg was no simple feat.

Once obtained, an ostrich egg needs to be emptied (blown) and left to dry naturally for at least six months before it is ready to be worked. The eggs therefore needed to be stored safely for an extended period of time. This has economic implications, since such secure storage also reflects someone’s long- term investment in deriving profit from decorated eggs. Who took this hit in the production chain?

Only once an egg was suitably dried could the highly skilled craftsmen undertake their decoration. This quite likely involved multiple people, since incising and painting a curved shell surface calls for different skills than smelting and shaping metal, and we believe that there was specialisation among ancient craftsmen. There is also the question of who determined the imagery – the craftsman, the patron, or someone else?

Traders were then required to transport the eggs from workshops and arrange for their distribution around the Mediterranean, whether by land, sea or both. Someone was responsible for carefully and securely loading this valuable cargo. And presumably there were individuals at destinations to take possession and distribute these objects to local merchants or consumers.

Recognising the range of people involved in ancient luxury production and exchange is significant beyond our understanding of antiquity. Luxury materials today have a major impact upon groups and individuals beyond just wealthy consumers. This is because luxury production and distribution connect people in complex ways across time and place.

Although we are in economically challenging times now, we should remember that the purchase of a luxury item supports the livelihood of more individuals around the world than we might first imagine. Perhaps we should forgive ourselves for splurging on something if we can, because we will be supporting the livelihoods of others when we do so.

The article ‘The origins of decorated ostrich eggs in the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East‘ (published in Antiquity) is free to read until the end of May 2021.

Image caption: Decorated ancient ostrich egg from Vulci, Italy. © Tamar Hodos, University of Bristol (with permission of the Trustees of the British Museum)