In Eastern Orthodox iconography, Mary Magdelene is normally pictured holding a red egg. In the simplest (and most plausible) version of the legend, Mary Magdalene left Jerusalem to preach the gospel of the Risen Saviour. Legend says that she was a Roman citizen, and as such was granted an audience with the Emperor Tiberius. At her audience, she presented him with a red egg and greeted him with the words: ‘Christ has risen.’ She then told the Emperor about Jesus, His preaching and miracles, and the meaning of His resurrection. The red egg symbolized life arising from a sealed chamber and was a symbol that would have been very meaningful and understandable to the Romans.
The Romans were familiar with the symbol of the egg representing regeneration due to their belief in the goddess Lat. Lat was the great mother goddess from which the world egg came forth. The idea of a mother goddess and her egg is much older than the story of Lat, and originally stems from the story of Semiramis, the wife of Nimrod.
Nimrod was the grandson of Noah, He was married to Semiramis, and they had a son, Tammuz. This was during the time of the Tower of Babylon where they practiced the Babylonian sun worship religion. Nimrod was worshipped as the sun god, Tammuz was born after the death of Nimrod, and it is said that Tammuz was Nimrod, reincarnated, when Semiramis said that she was impregnated by the sun (Nimrod).
When Semiramis died, she came back to the earth in a giant egg and landed in the Euphrates River. She came as the reincarnated, bare breasted goddess of fertility and sexual desire. She was called Ishtar, or better known in English, as Easter, the Queen of Heaven.
To prove her divinity, she changed a bird into an egg-laying rabbit and the rest is history. The priests of Babylonian sun-god worship would impregnate virgins on the Altar of Easter on the day of festival of Easter, also celebrated today all around the world. These “virgins” gave birth, and on December 25, the sun god’s birthday, they would sacrifice these 3-month-old babies and dip eggs into the blood as part of the ritual and worship to the sun god Nimrod. Ever wondered why there are rabbits associated with eggs and why the eggs are painted? Now you know.
When Christianity was adopted by the Romans, they blended their existing beliefs with those of their new faith, and that is why we color eggs and share egg laying rabbit tales around the time we recognize our saviors resurrection.
Further reading: Here
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