COVER STORY: SPECIES PROFILE
ABOUT 500BC, Egyptian geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca) were very common in the Nile delta of Egypt, hence their name of
“Nil goose”. There they were domesticated by the Ancient Egyptians. Their flesh was eaten, though their eggs were considered sacred. Some 4,000 years earlier, greylag geese – the ancestor of many domestic geese had been domesticated by the Egyptians. At about the same time, the swan goose |Anser cygnoides) was domesticated in China: the ancestor of the Chinese and other Oriental varieties identified by the round protuberance at the base of the upper mandible.
Surviving Egyptian murals mostly depict white-fronted, greylag and red-breasted geese, whereas the Egyptian goose does not commonly feature. Usually, it is only the brown breast marking and red legs that identify Egyptian geese in these pictures. To) are regularly misidentified as Egyptian geese in modern descriptions of murals.
