Medium Aevum • Medieval Europeans didn’t feel much affection for...

Medieval Europeans didn’t feel much affection for snakes, but still coveted snake eggs, believing they had magical powers. No less an authority than Pliny passed along advice on how to procure one of the precious items. The intrepid snake egg thief had to leap over a writhing mass of hissing snakes, toss the snake egg into the air, and apparently catch it in a piece of cloth.

Another interpretation of the heist was that the snakes themselves would loft the eggs into the air. Either way, if the snake egg fell to the ground, so the rulebook read, its magical powers were lost. The only problem was that the objects thought to be snake eggs were really fossil sea urchins.

Alternately called fairy loaves, pixie weights and shepherds’ crowns, the fossils were believed to protect against bad luck, protect against illness, safeguard their owners from lightning, help the deceased on their journey to the afterlife, or help the deceased return to life. Humans apparently have a long history of collecting and revering fossil sea urchins. A hand axe with a fossil urchin embedded in it has been attributed to Homo heidelbergensis.

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