Cook (dXficritfp, literally wakeftil). It is some- what singular that this bird (and poultry in general) should not be distinctly noticed in the Hebrew Scrip- tures, especially as reiuring gallinaceous fowls was an object of considerable economical importance in Egypt, and their flesh one of the principal resources for tiie
' table in every part of Southern and Western Asia. It is trae, the date when the practice of obtaining them by artificial heat commenced in Egypt is sufficiently disputable, and birds of the genus Gallus, properly so called, are not indigenous in Westem Asia, but belong in their original condition to lower India, Indo-China, and the great islands of Austral-Asia. Several spe- cies, apparently distinct, are still found wild in the for- ests and jungles of IndiiE^ and two at least, (ro/ftM Son- neratU and G. Stanly, are abundant in the woods of the Western Ghauts, to which our familiar fowl bear so close a resemblance that naturalists consider the former to be their originaL Domestic poultry have existed in Hindooetan fVom the remotest antiquity; probably much earlier than the twelfth century B.C. ; for in the InstittOes ofMemtj which Sir William Jones assigns to that age, we read of ** the breed of the town- cock," and of the practice of cock-fighting (v, 12; ix, 222). When the cock found its way to Western Asia and Europe we have no record. Fowl of plumage so gorgeous, of size so noble, of flesh so sapid, of habits so
I domestic, of increase so prolific, would doubtless early be carried along the various tracks of Oriental com- merce. There is no trace of it, so far as we are aware, on the monuments of Pharaonic Egypt, but we find the cock figured in those of Assyria. In a hunting
Ancient AssyrlAn Game-cock.
and shooting scene depicted at Khorsabad (Botta, pi. cviii-Ksxiv), the scene is laid in a fbrest whose charac- teristics seem to indicate a mountain region, such aa Media or Armenia. Much game is represented, in- cluding many kinds of birds, one of which seems to be the pheasant. But the most interesting is a large bird, which appears from its form, gait, and arching tan to be our common cock; it is walking on the ground amidst the trees. So far as this is evidence,
COCK-CROWING
398
COCKATRICE
it woold go to prove that the fbwlf in a wild state, ex- isted at that p^od in Western Asia, though now un- known on this side the Indus. The oock and hen are distinctly represented in the Xanthian sculptures, of an era probably contemporaneous with the Khorsabad palace of Nineveh. They appear also on Etruscan paintings, having probably a much higher antiquity (Mrs. Gray's E^wia^ p. 28, 46). The early Greeks and Romans figure them on their coins and gems, and speak of them as perfectly familiar objects, with no al- lusion to their introduction. They had even found their way into Britain at some unknown period long anterior to the Roman invasion, for Cssar tells us with surprise that the Britons did not think it right to eat the goose or the hen, though they bred both for the pleasure of keeping them (Bell. GaU. lib. v). This is a very interesting allusion, since we are compelled to refer their introduction into that island to the agency of the Phoenicians, who traded to Cornwall for tin cen- turies before Rome was built. Under these circum- stances, their absence tram Egypt, where in modem times they have been artificially bred to so immense an extent, becomes a remarkable and unaccountable fact. They were, indeed, it may be surmised, un- known in Egypt when the Mosaic law was promulga- ted, and, though imported soon after, they always re- mained in an undetermined condition, neither clean nor unclean, but liable to be declared either by decis- ions swayed by prejudice, or by fanciful analogies; perhaps chiefly the latter •, because poultry are devour- ers of unclean animals, scorpions, scolopendra, smaU lizards, and young serpents of every kind. But, al- though the rearing of common fowls was not encour- aged by the Hebrew population, it is evidently drawing inferences beyond their proper bounds when it is i sorted (see Cock-crowino) that they were unknown in Jerusalem, where civil wars and Greek and Roman dominion had greatly affected the national manners, See Fowi^ . ^
In the denials of Peter, described in the four Qob- pels, where the cock-crowing (see below) is mentioned by our Lord, the words are plain and direct; not, we think, admitting of cavil, or of being taken to signify anything but the real voice of the bird, the ^kiKTopo- (ptavia, as it is expressed in Mark xiii, 85, in its literal acceptation, and not as denoting the sound of a trum- pet, BO called because it proclaimed a watch in the night ; for to what else than a real hen and her brood does our Saviour allude in Luke xiii, 84, where the text is proof that the image of poultry was fiuniliar to the disciples, and consequently that they were not rareinJudsa? To the present time in the East, and on the Continent of Europe, this bird is still often kept, as amongst the Celts (Ctesar, BeU. GaU. iv, 12), not so much for food as for the purpose of announcing the ap- proach and dawn of day (Kitto, s. v. ; Fairbaim, s. v.). See Hen.