Free Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? by Andrew Lawler Page A

gods and goddesses, and during Rome’s heyday it predicted the outcome of battles. The rooster’s crow marked the apostle Peter’s betrayal of Jesus in Jerusalem on Good Friday, and followers of the cults of Mithras and Isis sacrificed it in temples from Egypt to Britain. By early medieval times, by papal decree, it pointed the wind’s way on the churches of Christendom.
    Islam gave it special rank as well. “When you listen to the crowing of the cock,” the prophet Muhammad would tell his followers a millennium after the rise of the Persian Empire, “ask Allah for His favor as it sees Angels.” According to some Islamic traditions, Muhammad saw an enormous and indescribably beautiful rooster standing on the foundation of the seventh and lowest level of earth with its head in the heavens, proclaiming the glory of God.
    Amid the flocks of geese and doves, ibis and partridge, crows and vultures found all over the Middle East and Europe, the chicken became the premier sacred bird of awakening, courage, and resurrection. This triumph over so many competitors took place within a few short centuries. One scholar thinks that the very shape of the chicken reminded the ancients of an oil lamp—the common source of artificial light in the ancient world—with its spout resembling a protruding beak and its handle the upright tail. Others point to the hen’s productivity and the fierceness of the rooster as potent symbols of fertility and war. Its crow, of course, encouraged farmers to quit their beds and produce sustenance for their communities and revenues for the state. The bird’s origin in the mysterious and faraway East and its long tradition as a royal bird also may have set it apart from more prosaic farmyard animals.
    Yet even in distant China, the chicken was associated with the sun and the conquest of light over darkness. This may reflect Zoroastrian influence that stretched all the way to the Middle Kingdom, since one empress worshipped a god identified as Ahura Mazda in the early centuries AD, when Persians traded as far east as the Pacific coast. A Chinese legend from the third century AD claims that the bird descended from the Vermilion Lord, a human who changed himself into a chicken. Daoist priests in this period sacrificed chickens to consecrate a new temple, ward off evil spirits threatening the imperial household, and drive away epidemics. By holding a rooster to his mouth—a peculiar practice still common among ­cockfighters—a priest could breathe out unwanted demons. A jiren , or chicken officer, was responsible for the sacrificial birds, and maintaining a flock of different colors to meet the needs of various rituals.
    In that time, even the voice of the rooster was considered regal. When Chinese rulers wanted to announce a general amnesty, the imperial guard erected a giant cock with a head of pure gold in front of the palace on a post under a richly decorated pavilion. Thousands of people would vie to take a bit of earth from around the post to gain luck. Even today, one of the most prominent film awards given in China is a statue of a golden rooster. The Chinese ideogram for rooster sounds like the one for good omen, and the bird is one of the twelve zodiac signs. People born under its sign are considered to be keenly observant truth tellers. In early medieval Korea, chickens were raised in the royal court, and a white rooster is said to have heralded the birth of the founder of a clan and dynasty.
    In Japan, by the seventh century AD, white chickens sacred to the great Japanese Shinto goddess of the sun, Amaterasu-ōmikami, roamed temple grounds. They were the sole animals capable of drawing her out of the cave where she hid. The western Chinese minority group called the Miao still tell the story of the world’s early days, when the six suns refused to come out because they feared an archer would shoot them. No one knew what to do. Then a