Wilkinson, John Gardner: Topographie of Thebes, and general view of Egypt: being a short account of the principal objects worthy of notice in the valley of the Nile, to the second cataracte and Wadi Samneh, with the Fyoom, Oases and eastern desert, from Sooez to Bertenice (London, 1835)

246 EGGS HATCHED IN OVENS. [Chap. V.

but also by artificial means, which the ingenuity
of this people had discovered; and the eggs of
fowls and geese* were hatched by ovens, heated to
a requisite temperature, which imitated the warmth,
while they dispensed with the necessity of the sit-
ting, of the hens.f

This custom has been handed down to their
descendants; and the Copts, in various parts of
Egypt, supply the markets, during the spring, with
the chickens this ingenious process has enabled
them to rear.

I may be excused for introducing a brief notice
of the means employed for this purpose.

Eggs hatched by artificial means.\—The proprietors
of the ovens make the round of the villages, in their
vicinity, and collect the eggs from the peasants,
which they give in charge to the rearers, who,
without any previous examination, place all they
receive on mats strewed with bran, in a room eleven
feet square, with a flat roof, and about four feet
hiffh : over which is a chamber of the same size,
but with a vaulted roof, and about nine feet high;%
a small aperture in the centre of the vault admit-
ting light during the warm weather, and another of

* The wild geese of the Nile are; as I can attest, very easily
tamed when reared in the poultry-yard.

t Diodor. i. s. *!4 ; Plin. x. c. 54.

X This artificial process has also been introduced into Europe
from this country.

§ By way of distinction I shall call the former the oven, and
the latter the upper room.