Sacramental Eggs Ancient & Modern

Baby Helen Says Hello

I have been amused by the painfully Little-Englander-middle-class spat between Anglicans, Cadbury and the National Trust over the secularisation of egg hunts. What is needed to reclaim the egg for longue-durée Human Studies is clearly a brief homily on Ovates in Classical Greek Art. 

Leda perturbed by finding a gigantic egg on the temple altar

  This means, if we move swiftly on from the masculinist Cosmic Egg of the Orphic mystery cult, from which hatched the primordial male Ur-being Phanes, that we need to talk about Helen.

"I'll smash it with my mallet and pour the contents into your bucket"

Helen was hatched from an egg laid by either Nemesis or Leda, depending on which ancient author you are reading. Nemesis was an important goddess worshipped in the well-preserved seaside town of Rhamnous, 45 km north-east of Athens. Zeus was believed to have impregnated her there in the form of a swan or goose while she was asleep; none too happy with the product of this rape, she dumped the egg on Leda, who incubated it and became Helen’s adoptive mother.

The Dioscuri, Literal Egg-Heads

Nemesis' Egg at Disgraced Theme Park

Nemesis’ Sub-Terra egg, a capsule in which terrified passengers were dropped into a dystopic abyss, was until recently to be avoided at the theme-park Alton Towers. But the other version of Helen's story is now better known. In this, the biological mother of Helen, the Dioscuri, and sometimes Clytemnestra, was Leda. One smartass Greek poet, Lycophron, claimed that the Dioscuri’s dome-shaped hats memorialised their antenatal egg-shell, split in two. Note the baby with half an egg-shell on his head in the Bachiacca painting below.

Lady Gaga hatching at the Grammys

The tradition of Helen’s egg had a spectacular potential, as Lady Gaga knows well. This made it a popular theme on the ancient Greek stage. Vases show Leda’s stupefaction at the gift Nemesis has deposited for her; others comically depict various spectators puzzling over the egg’s contents, wondering whether to smash the eggshell with a mallet, or watching Helen actually emerge.

Terracotta  Egg (ᾠόν)  

Alternatively, Greeks could buy a painted egg, made from pottery, perhaps showing Paris and Helen in a chariot, in an allusion to Helen’s birth. Some terracotta eggs were made, like prototypical Kinder-eggs, with a sweet little baby girl crouching inside. 

Instead of which, in my teen-dominated household at least, the confectionery of choice this year is an entire E-Number sty-full of alliterative pigs and piglets. I think I’ll be sticking to roast lamb.

Bachiacca's Leda & Swan have FIVE egg-babies