Goose

The Geese of Ancient Egypt


 * Egyptian Name:**

//Gengen, Swm//, //Srw//, or //Trp//


 * Hieroglyphics:**



The ancient Egyptians bred several varieties of geese, such as the Egyptian Goose, Red-breasted Goose, Brant Goose, Bean Goose, Greater White-fronted Goose and the Greylag Goose. Goose meat and eggs were eaten by the rich and poor alike, and roasted goose was a common dish throughout the Dynastic Period. Dressed geese were frequently included in the offerings to the dead - numerous examples of preserved remains have been found. Geese were also boiled and pickled, and plucked geese can be seen hanging in images of butcher's shops. Goose down stuffed pillows, and goose fat was used for frying and as a condiment.

The ancient Egyptians were the first people who domesticated geese. Large flocks of geese were kept in poultry yards or enclosures with pools for breeding, and were fed milled grain and bread pellets. A decree of Seti I states that on a bird farm at Abydos "their number is like the sand on the shore." Indeed, it is recorded that Ramses III offered over 680,000 geese to the temples.

The Egyptian hieroglyphic for "goose" was used in words such as "fat," "plumb," and "earth." A goose or duck with a turned-back head symbolized eroticism and rebirth. The accession of a new pharaoh was announced by releasing four wild geese to the four corners of the sky, to bless his reign with prosperity. During the construction of temples, a goose was beheaded and the blood poured into the foundation trench. Mummified geese were found in the foundation deposits of the funerary temple of Thutmosis II.

The self-sacrificing nature of the goose was much admired – geese were thought to love their young so much that they readily gave themselves up to hunters, if only their children might be spared. Geese were sometimes kept as pets and given the run of the house, and were mummified and buried with their owners when they died.

The Egyptian Goose was the sacred bird of Amun, and flocks were kept at his temples. Thutmes III wrote "I formed for Amun flocks of geese to fill the sacred lake, for the offerings of every day. Behold, I gave to Amun two fattened geese each day, as fixed dues to my father Amun." Geese were sacrificed by wringing the neck or cutting the throat, then the body was rubbed with oil and singed.

Prayers have been found addressed to the “Good Goose of Amun.” A barque sacred to Amun, shaped like an enormous goose, has been found. The god Geb was called the “Great Cackler” or “Great Honker” and was often represented as a White-fronted Goose - it was in this form that he was said to have laid the egg from which the sun was hatched.

A number of funerary texts compare the deceased to a goose chick in an egg: “Behold, the deceased in being; behold, the deceased is knit together; behold, the deceased has broken the egg.” After breaking out of the egg, the deceased is reborn, flying up from the nest like a young goose. Because of this association with eggs and new life, egg amulets were sometimes buried with the dead, and goose eggs were given as offerings in both tombs and temples. A lid on one of Tutankhamen’s coffins was carved in the shape of a nest containing four eggs. The coffin itself was sometimes described as an egg (//swh't//.)

The goose, the Egyptian Goose in particular, was well known for its belligerent and mischievous character. A teacher describes his pupil thus: "You are worse than the goose of the shore, that is busy with mischief. It spends the summer destroying the dates, the winter destroying the seed-grain. It spends the balance of the year in pursuit of the cultivators. It does not let seed be cast to the ground without snatching it [in its fall]. One cannot catch it by snaring. One does not offer it in the temple. The evil, sharp-eyed bird that does no work!"

The Waterfowl of Ancient Egypt