page_title: Chicken
section_title: In religion and mythology
hierarchical_section_title: Chicken / In religion and mythology
caption_attribution_description: English: 1919 print of a fabric square of a Persian bird or Persian cock design that belongs to the Vatican in Rome dating to 600 C.E.
context_page_description: The chicken is a type of domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the red junglefowl. Chickens are one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, with a total population of 23.7 billion as of 2018. up from more than 19 billion in 2011. There are more chickens in the world than any other bird or domesticated fowl. Humans keep chickens primarily as a source of food and, less commonly, as pets. Originally raised for cockfighting or for special ceremonies, chickens were not kept for food until the Hellenistic period.
  Genetic studies have pointed to multiple maternal origins in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, but with the clade found in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa originating in the Indian subcontinent. From ancient India, the domesticated chicken spread to Lydia in western Asia Minor, and to Greece by the 5th century BC. Fowl had been known in Egypt since the mid-15th century BC, with the "bird that gives birth every day" having come to Egypt from the land between Syria and Shinar, Babylonia, according to the annals of Thutmose III.
context_section_description: Since antiquity chickens have been, and still are, a sacred animal in some cultures and deeply embedded within belief systems and religious worship. The term "Persian bird" for the rooster appears to have been given by the Greeks after Persian contact "because of his great importance and his religious use among the Persians".
  In Indonesia the chicken has great significance during the Hindu cremation ceremony. A chicken is considered a channel for evil spirits which may be present during the ceremony. A chicken is tethered by the leg and kept present at the ceremony for its duration to ensure that any evil spirits present go into the chicken and not the family members. The chicken is then taken home and returns to its normal life.
  In ancient Greece, chickens were not normally used for sacrifices, perhaps because they were still considered an exotic animal. Because of its valor, the cock is found as an attribute of Ares, Heracles, and Athena. The alleged last words of Socrates as he died from hemlock poisoning, as recounted by Plato, were "Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?", signifying that death was a cure for the illness of life.
  The Greeks believed that even lions were afraid of roosters. Several of Aesop's Fables reference this belief.
  In the New Testament, Jesus prophesied the betrayal by Peter: "Jesus answered, 'I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.'" It happened, and Peter cried bitterly. This made the rooster a symbol for both vigilance and betrayal.
  Earlier, Jesus compares himself to a mother hen when talking about Jerusalem: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing."
  In the sixth century, Pope Gregory I declared the rooster the emblem of Christianity and another Papal enactment of the ninth century by Pope Nicholas I ordered the figure of the rooster to be placed on every church steeple.
  In many Central European folk tales, the devil is believed to flee at the first crowing of a rooster.
  In traditional Jewish practice, a kosher animal is swung around the head and then slaughtered on the afternoon before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in a ritual called kapparos; it is now common practice to cradle the bird and move him or her around the head. A chicken or fish is typically used because it is commonly available (and small enough to hold). The sacrifice of the animal is to receive atonement, for the animal symbolically takes on all the person's sins in kapparos. The meat is then donated to the poor. A woman brings a hen for the ceremony, while a man brings a rooster. Although not a sacrifice in the biblical sense, the death of the animal reminds the penitent sinner that his or her life is in God's hands.
  The Talmud speaks of learning "courtesy toward one's mate" from the rooster. This might refer to the fact that when a rooster finds something good to eat, he calls his hens to eat first.  A rooster might also come to the aid of a hen if she is attacked. The Talmud likewise provides us with the statement "Had the Torah not been given to us, we would have learned modesty from cats, honest toil from ants, chastity from doves and gallantry from cocks", which may be further understood as to that of the gallantry of cocks being taken in the context of a religious instilling vessel of "a girt one of the loins" (Young's Literal Translation) that which is "stately in his stride" and "move with stately bearing" in the Book of Proverbs 30:29-31 as referenced by Michael V. Fox in his Proverbs 10-31 where Saʻadiah ben Yosef Gaon (Saadia Gaon) identifies the definitive trait of "A cock girded about the loins" in Proverbs 30:31 (Douay–Rheims Bible) as "the honesty of their behavior and their success", identifying a spiritual purpose of a religious vessel within that religious instilling schema of purpose and use.
  The chicken is one of the symbols of the Chinese Zodiac. In 
caption: Vatican Persian Cock — A 1919 print of a fabric square of a Persian cock or a Persian bird design belonging to the Vatican (Holy See) in Rome dating to 600 CE. Notice the halo denoting the status of being holy in that religious schema.
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