Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? (38 page)

38
One tablet, dated to the thirteenth year of Ibbi-Sin's
: Peter Steinkeller, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2013.

38
A Turk invited to an American Thanksgiving
: Mark Forsyth, “The Turkey's Turkey Connection,”
New York Times
, November 27, 2013, accessed March 18, 2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/opinion/the-turkeys-turkey-connection.html?_r=0.

38
What is called “spotted” may be “speckled”
: Steinkeller, interview.

38
Some specialists think that, based on a variety of clues
: Daniel T. Potts,
A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East
, 763.

39
Called “Enki and the World Order”
: J. A. Black et al., “Enki and the World Order: Translation,”
The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
,
University of Oxford, 1998–, accessed March 18, 2014,
http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr113.htm
.

39
“No, no, the sternum”
: Joris Peters, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2012.

41
In 1988, for example, a Chinese
: Barbara West and Ben-Xiong Zhou, “Did Chickens Go North? New Evidence for Domestication,” abstract,
World's Poultry Science Journal
45, no. 3 (1989), accessed March 18, 2014,
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=624516
.

41
The oldest textual evidence for Chinese chickens
: Ian F. Darwin,
Java Cookbook
(Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 2001), 852.

42
“We are the oldest religion”
:
Baba Chawish, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2014.

43
Scholars say that the religion
:
Birgul Acikyildiz,
The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion
(London: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2010), 74.

43
Tawûsê Melek takes the form
: Ibid.

43
A massive ziggurat
: Andrew Lawler, “Treasure Under Saddam's Feet,”
Discover
, October 2002.

43
Within one of those graves, beside the skull
: Prudence Oliver Harper,
Assyrian Origins: Discoveries at Ashur on the Tigris; Antiquities in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin
(New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995), 84.

43
In the Old Testament, Assyrians are
:
All Things in the Bible: An Encyclopedia of the Biblical World
, comp. Nancy M. Tischler (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), 44.

44
The little cylindrical box
:
Prudence Oliver Harper,
Assyrian Origins: Discoveries at Ashur on the Tigris
, 84.

44
A temple dedicated to both gods was built around 1500 BC in Assur
: Alvin J. Cottrell,
The Persian Gulf States: A General Survey
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 422.

44
Babylon in the sixth century BC
: Irving L. Finkel et al.,
Babylon
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 11.

44
The multicolored Etemenanki
: David Asheri et al.,
A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 201.

44
Marduk had been the patron
: Paul-Alain Beaulieu, “Nabonidus the Mad King: A Reconsideration of His Steles from Harran and Babylon,” in
Representations of Political Power: Case Histories from Times of Change and Dissolving Order in the Ancient Near East
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 137.

45
When he returned
: Lisbeth S. Fried,
The Priest and the Great King: Temple-Palace Relations in the Persian Empire
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 29.

45
They granted a measure of self-government to this multiethnic society
: Daniel T. Potts,
The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 346.

46
“The cock is created to oppose the demons and sorcerers”
: Richard D. Mann,
The Rise of Mah
ā
sena: The Transformation of Skanda-Karttikeya in North India from the Kus
āna
to Gupta Empires
(Leiden: Brill, 2012), 127.

46
The Persians held the rooster in such esteem that it was forbidden
: Maneckji Nusservanji Dhalla,
Zoroastrian Civilization: From the Earliest Times to the Downfall of the Last Zoroastrian Empire, 651 A.D.
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1922), 185.

46
It banished the sloth-demon
: Ibid.

46
The bird landed “the death blow”
: Ibid.

46
There are no contemporary explanations
: Wouter Henkelman, “The Royal Achaemenid Crown,”
Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran
19 (1995/96): 133.

46
Another Persian sacred
:
The Oxford Encyclopaedia, Or, Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and General Literature
, comps. W. Harris et al. (Bristol: Thoemmes, 2003), s.v. ­“Costume.”

46
The chicken arrived in Persia
: Donald P. Hansen and Erica Ehrenberg, “The Rooster in Mesopotamia,” in
Leaving No Stones Unturned: Essays on the Ancient Near East and Egypt in Honor of Donald P. Hansen
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 53.

46
According to some traditions
: Mary Boyce,
A History of Zoroastrianism
(Leiden: Brill, 1975), 3.

46
Zoroaster, some scholars say
: Ibid., 192.

46
Ahura Mazda created Angra Mainyu
: Ibid.

47
And among Ahura Mazda's assistants
: Touraj Daryaee,
The Oxford Handbook of ­Iranian History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 91.

47
One of his tools is the rooster
: Martin Haug and Edward William West,
Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsis
(London: Trübner & Co., 1878), 245.

47
Such Zoroastrian beliefs penetrated much
: Andrew Lawler, “Edge of an Empire,”
Archaeology Journal
64, no. 5 (September/October 2011).

47
A Persian coffin
: Hansen and Ehrenberg,
Leaving No Stones Unturned
,
53.

47
The Persian prophet's view of
: Risa Levitt Kohn and Rebecca Moore,
A Portable God: The Origin of Judaism and Christianity
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield ­Publishers, 2007), 65.

47
Before the Persians came to Palestine
: Gunnar G. Sevelius, MD,
The Nine Pillars of History
(Self-published via AuthorHouse, 2012), 237.

47
The only religious authorities
: Matthew 2:1 (
New American Bible
).

47
A couple of centuries after Cyrus's
: Simon Davis,
The Archaeology of Animals
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 187.

47
The rooster's crow
: Mark 14:72 (
New American Bible
).

47
By early medieval times
: Accessed May 14, 2014,
http://thingstodo.viator.com/vatican-city/st-peters-basilica-sacristy-treasury-museum/
.

48
“When you listen”
: Ram Swarup,
Understanding the Hadith: The Sacred Traditions of Islam
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002), 199.

48
According to some Islamic traditions
: James Lyman Merrick,
The Life and Religion of Mohammed: As Contained in the Sheeãh Traditions of the Hyât-ul-Kuloob
(Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Co., 1850), 196.

48
One scholar thinks that the very shape
: Hansen and Ehrenberg,
Leaving No Stones Unturned
, 61.

48
The bird's origin in the mysterious
: Maarten Jozef Vermaseren,
The Excavations in the Mithraeum of the Church of Santa Prisca in Rome
(Neiden, Norway: Brill, 1965), 163.

48
This may reflect Zoroastrian
: Sanping Chen,
Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 110.

48
A Chinese legend from the
: Roel Sterckx,
The Animal and the Daemon in Early China
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 42.

48
Daoist priests in this period
: Ibid., 41.

48
A
jiren
, or chicken officer
: Ibid.

49
When Chinese rulers
: Sanping Chen,
Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages
, 104.

49
Even today, one of
:
Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema
,
comps. Tan Ye and Yun Zhu (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2012), s.v. “Golden Rooster Awards, The.”

49
The Chinese ideogram for rooster
: Deanna Washington,
The Language of Gifts: The Essential Guide to Meaningful Gift Giving
(Berkeley, CA: Conari Press, 2000), 86.

49
In early medieval Korea
:
Han'guk Munhwa Korean Culture
(Los Angeles: Korean Cultural Service, 2001), 22:27.

49
In Japan, by the seventh century AD
: Fukuda Hideko, “From Japan to Ancient Orient,”
The Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers
, 1998, 23, 105.

49
The western Chinese minority group
: Michael Witzel,
The Origins of the World's Mythologies
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 144.

49
A team of Japanese researchers
: Tsuyoshi Shimmura and Takashi Yoshimura, “Circadian Clock Determines the Timing of Rooster Crowing,”
Current Biology
23, no. 6 (2013): R231–233, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.02.015.

49
From Germanic graves
: Leslie Webster and Michelle Brown,
The Transformation of the Roman World AD 400–900
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 153.

3. The Healing Clutch

50
“We owe a cock”
: Plato,
Symposium and the Death of Socrates
, trans. Tom Griffith (Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Edition Limited, 1997), 210.

50
The last words of a condemned
: Alexander Nehamas,
Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 48.

50
In ancient Greece, sacrificing
: Emma Jeannette Levy Edelstein and Ludwig Edelstein,
Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 190.

50
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,
The Pre-­Platonic Philosophers
, trans. Greg Whitlock (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 261.

50
Others say he was expressing his
: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols, Or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer
, ed.
Duncan Large (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 87.

50
The classicist Eva Keuls
: Eva C. Keuls,
The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens
(New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 79.

51
“Persian cock!”
: G. Theodoridis, trans., “Aristophanes' ‘The Birds,' ” Poetry in Translation, 2005, accessed March 18, 2014,
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Birds.htm
.

51
Three centuries earlier, when Homer
: Homer, “A Visit of Emissaries,” book nine in
The Iliad
, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 209.

51
A detailed and lifelike terra-cotta rooster
: Steven H. Rutledge,
Ancient Rome as a Museum: Power, Identity, and the Culture of Collecting
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 88.

51
Aesop's goose laid a golden egg
: Samuel Croxall and George Fyler Townsend,
The Fables of Aesop
(London: F. Warner, 1866), 61.

51
“Nourish a cock, but”
: Thomas Taylor, trans.,
Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, Or, Pythagoric Life
(Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 1986), 207.

51
The bird also was associated with Persephone
: Mark P. Morford and Robert J. Lenardon,
Classical Mythology
(New York: McKay, 1971), 241.

51
At the time of Socrates's death
: Pierre Briant,
From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 548.

52
A deliciously juicy new fruit
:
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome
,
comps. Michael Gagarin and Elaine Fantham (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), s.v. “Peach.”

52
“It was he”—the rooster—
: Theodoridis, “Aristophanes' ‘The Birds.' ”

53
Roosters on Greek vases perch
: Yves Bonnefoy,
Greek and Egyptian Mythologies
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 131.